


Repellent

by torabing



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: (that was a joke), Ace Attorney Investigations: Adrien Agreste, Canon Divergence - pre-Volpina, F/M, POV Adrien Agreste, POV Third Person Limited, no S2 spoilers, unreliable narrative, waste of cake
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-27 06:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 39,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6273631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torabing/pseuds/torabing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adrien messed up, and will continue to mess up for the foreseeable future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Today was Tuesday, an utterly ordinary morning, and Adrien was sitting at his desk, doing nothing more thrilling than trying to spin a pencil between his fingers. He’d seen videos of this sort of thing, and being so adept with a full-length staff, it _felt_ like it should be easy, but the pencil would clip one of his knuckles and then clatter to the wooden desk in an unskilled, artless drop. It was the seventh time this morning, but class wouldn’t start for a while yet, and he didn’t mind the practice. There wasn’t much else for him to do. Although also there early, his friend Nino had been loitering near the back of the classroom since Adrien arrived, talking to Max about something, and the girls that usually sat behind them, Alya and Marinette, weren’t here yet. While some days it seemed like a contest between who would be _less_ punctual, him or Marinette, it seemed today he’d beaten her and Alya both. Aside from them, Adrien was still a little shy of the other students; nobody really went out of their way to speak to him, most already comfortable in their established friendships, and he still had difficulty starting conversations.

His pencil clattered to the desk again for fall number eight. Dang. He thought he was really going to have it that time, but when he reached to pick it up and try again, another hand darted into his line of vision and snatched the pencil much more quickly.

“Can I borrow this,” said Chloé, not asked, and not waiting for Adrien’s answer before she smiled at him in her pinched, tightlipped way, and pulled herself up to sit sideways across his desk. She scribbled all over the front of a small, square envelope; the pale, floral yellow of it rapidly grew dark as she worked, and the rapid _scritch-scratch_ of the pencil lead moving back and forth made Adrien wince. It sounded like she was trying to set it on fire through sheer force of will.

“Uh, sure,” he said finally, wanting to at least be polite. It hadn’t been much of a question, but he didn’t mind. From the way she was sitting, Adrien didn’t get to see what she was crossing out, but if she was working that hard on it, it must have been pretty bad. They’d been friends for years, but Adrien hadn’t realized how widely disliked she was until he started attending school with her. He’d like to think most people were pretty nice, but if Chloé had shown him the front to be some insult – a caricature of her looks, or some barb about her preoccupation with prestige – he didn’t think it would be a total surprise.

She must have seen the frown on his face, or the pinch between his brows, because Chloé was much gentler about putting his pencil back down on the desk. Or perhaps it was just so she could set her hand down to lean her weight on it, for no sooner did Adrien glance down at her hand then could he smell the sudden nearness of her perfume as she leaned in close to his ear.

“Adrien,” she dragged out his name into twice as many syllables as it needed, which meant it was just enough to stand in for ‘do a favor for me.’ He leaned away from her, trying to get a breath of air outside her fragrance. Cloying. The scent of daffodils, but as suspended in some fruity syrup. Summery, like apricots or canned peaches. They didn't go together at all. He tried not to cough.

He was very good at not-coughing. “What is it, Chloé?”

She leaned back a little, sitting up straighter on his side of the desk. A sideways glance towards the door and the clock confirmed that their teacher was still a few minutes away, so no one was there to chastise her behavior. Besides, if she was only talking to Adrien, then at least she wasn’t causing trouble for anyone else. Chloé waved the yellow envelope with its blackened face like a paper fan, its motion drawing back his attention, before she offered it to him.

“Tear this up for me?” An actual, genuine, question-mark-included request from Chloé. Adrien blinked twice for surprise, brow furrowing as he reached for the item. His hesitance must have been clear on his face, or else his silence was question enough, because Chloé was quick to continue as if he’d asked. “It’s an invitation to some _party_ and I _know_ I’m going to be busy this weekend and the host and I are _not_ friends so there’s no _way_ I’d be caught _dead_ going to that, but did you know people _actually_ go through the garbage around here? It’s so disgusting. Someone would see that card and take it and, I don’t know, realize _they_ weren’t invited and now they have some _poor girl’s_ address and it’s _my_ fault she gets stalked! Do you know how irritating that is? So rip it up for me.”

Adrien blinked a third time. Chloé crossed her arms.

“I’ll get a papercut!”

Adrien sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and took the envelope. It was pretty stiff for how small it was, so her story made sense. It definitely felt like there was a folded card inside, and it was probably the right size for a classmate’s kind of invitation. He was used to more _formal_ things, but it was usually his father getting invited to weddings, not Adrien. He wasn’t in the right age bracket for that kind of thing anyway. The point was, _Adrien_ had never been invited to any real parties, and he couldn’t help but feel a small spark of envy. Chloé could get invited to parties hosted by girls she didn’t even like… what was that like? Did she get invited to parties hosted by girls she _did_ like, too? What was _that_ like?

It was a small, petty feeling – envy without anger, jealousy without resentment. It wasn’t anything that made him dislike Chloé, or whoever was throwing a party that Chloé was invited to. It _was_ irritation enough that when he tore the card in half, his motion was not gentle, and there was a tense frown pulling at his mouth. Halved, and halved, and halved again; it was cathartic. As the pieces grew smaller, bits of card and envelope fell from between his fingers like confetti, and he barely heard Chloé’s trilling _Thanks, Adrien,_ as she shoved off his desk and made her way back to her own seat. The pieces needed to be small enough that whoever’s address was in there couldn’t be put back together and taken; that was distant, thoughtless justification enough. It wasn’t until he couldn’t find any piece big enough to hold that Adrien finally stopped. His hands hovered over the corpse of an invitation, scraps of white and pink cardstock mixed in with the yellow of the flimsier envelope paper. He’d destroyed it so completely, he wasn’t sure a single letter could have fit on any single scrap of paper, let alone a name or a street address.

As far as favors for Chloé went, that one wasn’t that bad. He didn’t even get her feared papercut. But the bell for the start of class jolted him out of one thought and into another – he couldn’t just leave a mess like this on his desk all day, he’d wind up with confetti in all his notes and probably in his sleeves. He rose from his seat as Nino swung around to take the spot beside him, sweeping the small pile into his cupped palm at the desk’s edge.

He wouldn’t recall this part at first, when he thought back to this moment. Later, when Adrien would rack his brain for what could have gone differently this morning, he wouldn’t think of this at all.

His desk was in the front row, so it was only a few steps from there to the garbage bin at the front of the room. The door opened; his palms turned, releasing white-and-yellow confetti into the rubbish, each piece too small to identify its contents or its neighbors. He wiped his palms against one another to remove the stragglers. The commotion of the class was dying down, but in a slow, organic way; this wasn’t some spotlit stage. Adrien turned.

Marinette was there. She stood frozen in the doorway, eyes open, mouth open, the shock on her face like she’d just seen a ghost – like she was caught in some horror movie, five seconds before her cue to scream. Adrien turned; his attention went sharply to the space behind him, worried suddenly for the presence of an akuma, or something dangerous – but of course there was nothing there. Adrien turned back; Marinette remained frozen.

The rest happened too quickly, too fast. There was nothing he could have done except _what_ he’d done. Alya, behind Marinette, gave her friend a shove at the backs of her shoulders to propel her into the room. Marinette, rigid, her hands clutching the sides of a wide box, stumbled forward, crying out for lost balance. Marinette, panicking, let go of the box and pinwheeled her arms, trying to catch herself from falling. Adrien, startled, went to Marinette, trying to catch her hands with his own. Marinette, _recoiling,_ tried to change direction mid-lurch; her leg went out from under her, and she hit the ground in front of him with a painful _fwhump._ Adrien, with his hands outstretched, caught the box above her between his palms.

Marinette looked up.

The top of the box, facing down, slipped open.

The weight of the box left his grasp, and even though Adrien’s palms didn’t let it slide one inch, there was nothing he could do to stop it. It fell with a wet, horrifying _fluurp._ The room went dead silent. The air filled with the thick scent of chocolate and cream. The full cake had fallen directly onto Marinette – it covered her face in thick, black wedges, and the cream and frosting clung to her hair, her clothing, the floor around her.

Adrien was frozen, the empty cake box hanging open between his hands. He couldn’t see Marinette’s eyes. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

It was Chloé’s laughter that shattered the silence. She didn’t _say_ anything – no insults, no taunts, no barbs towards the scene before her – but her laughter was so loud it bounced along the classroom walls; it was all Adrien could hear.

It seemed like it was all Marinette could hear, too. Her hand scraped frosting and cream off of her face, the sponge-like slices of cake that stuck to her cheeks and her mouth. She coughed. Her whole face was turning red, and while Adrien stood there, useless and frozen and stricken with a paralysis of anxiety he’d never felt before, Marinette scrambled through the mess of cake and frosting and cream that had smeared out across the floor around her, a confectionery warzone, and got to her feet in a motion that seemed only like slipping upward. Her hurry and proximity knocked the empty box out of Adrien’s hands, and she was halfway across the room – Chloé’s laughter chasing after her – before time seemed to start again.

Adrien lurched forward to chase after her, Marinette’s name halfway out his mouth, but he honestly deserved how quickly he slipped on the wreckage of dessert, falling down where Marinette had just escaped. His jaw hit the ground and his teeth cracked together hard enough to make him dizzy, but the last forty-five seconds were looping back in his mind with greater speed and higher clarity and oh _god,_ he just dropped a cake on Marinette and then he just _stood there **like an idiot**._

“Marinette, wait—!”


	2. Chapter 2

Alya was out the door first; Adrien stumbled over the threshold and forced the door closed behind him to cut off the racket. Feminine laughter was the loudest, ringing in Adrien’s ears, but there was an outcry from the other students too. A _hey_ here, an _is she okay?_  there, someone (Nino?) threatening to give Chloé _something to laugh about,_ and the voice of Mme. Bustier over the top, trying to smother their ruckus. When had she come in? With Marinette and Alya, or after? He didn’t remember brushing past her.

In the first step he tripped over Alya’s discarded bag, stumbled to catch himself on the railing, and barely avoided stomping on Marinette’s round, pink clutch. Alya was already running down the stairway, and he didn’t need to look for the obvious trail of cake debris to know she was headed the right way. He sprinted to catch up.

_“Isn’t it a little early for gymnasium? I’m trying to take a cat-nap in here!”_

His kwami, Plagg: the spirit of the Miraculous ring he wore, and the key to its power. Without Plagg, there was no transformation, and with no transformation, no Chat Noir. Adrien had never met a lazier layabout than Plagg. His only real wants in life were finding his next plate of cheese, and giving Adrien a hard time – and right now, it was clearly the latter.

“You can nap _later,_ ” he shot back, vaulting over the railing of the stairs as he spotted Alya disappear down one of the longer hallways. “ _After_ I find Marinette—”

_“Oh? What did she do, steal your cell phone?”_ Like soot and smoke, ethereal coal, the spirit drifted out of Adrien’s inner shirt pocket, floating at pace with his sprint as though reclining at the poolside. Adrien’s heel skidded across the linoleum floor to take the corner, friction lost on a dollop of blue frosting, and he narrowly avoided hitting the opposite wall. At least he knew he was going the right direction – how were those girls so _fast?_

_“Can’t you just get a new one? It would be easier, and I could go back to sl—”_

“—Shh!”

Alya wasn’t as far ahead as he thought. As Adrien’s shoes squealed against the floor, he scooped Plagg out of the air, cupping his hand over the kwami and pressing him against the wall. For balance. At least by appearances. His hand remained arched, a little unnatural. Alya was looking at him.

“Shh… she’s, Marinette, is she… uhh?”

While he was sure he _had_ a question when he started talking, the way Alya was staring at him as she approached made him feel like he was on the wrong side of the woods. Like he’d just come across a hungry pack of wolves at a running brook, but the whole pack was embodied in just one girl. One step she was out of reach, and by the next she had both her hands on his shoulders, propelling him backward. The movement forced him to release Plagg, but the kwami didn’t need any guidance to go into hiding. Adrien only saw his movement in the trail of black dust in the air as he slipped through one of the locker vents.

“You can’t be _in here,_ ” she said, voice dropping into a low whisper.

His expression wasn’t quite a scowl, but it was close. “What?” But even as he tried to question her (and it was _try,_ really), Alya kept pushing him back. Even with his heart pounding for guilt and worry, he didn’t struggle against her. It was hard enough backpedaling without stepping in chunks of moist, spongy cake that Marinette had shed during her escape. Once they had taken so many steps, Alya stopped, crossing her arms. “Alya, come on, I just want to know if she’s okay—”

“Not by storming into the girls’ locker room, you don’t.” Her arms crossed tighter, and though she wasn’t as tall as Adrien, the way she leaned forward made him want to sink backwards. “You’re just as bad as she is with signs like that, aren’t you?”

_Just as bad as_ — _?_   With a start, Adrien realized the arbitrary point Alya had pushed him back to was simply one of the open archways. The one behind him led to the boys’ locker room, which was attached to the gymnasium at the end of this hallway. Alya stood at the threshold of the girls’ side. _Oh._

Flustered by his mistake, Adrien scrubbed a hand through his hair, but he couldn’t just let it sit like this, either. His stomach was still twisting up with guilt, and the sound of Chloé’s laughter was still ringing in his ears. He held up his hands in surrender.

“Okay, okay, I won’t go in. But… is she okay? She’s not hurt, is she?”

Alya’s protective stance relaxed, her arms uncrossing and her breath coming out in a sigh. She turned to glance into the locker room, but her feet didn’t budge.

“Marinette’s kind of a klutz, but I don’t think she would have run all this way on a busted ankle. She’s not hurt, but she’s _hurt,_ you know?”

She kept her gaze turned towards the room behind her instead of towards Adrien, but he wasn’t watching Alya’s face either. It was too early in the day for any class to be in the gymnasium, so the locker rooms were both empty of students. Aside from him and Alya, there wasn’t anyone else talking in this part of the school. When she fell silent, the hall fell quiet. All he could hear were his own anxious, spinning thoughts. He felt guilty, but he didn’t know why he felt _this_ guilty; it was Marinette, after all. Their first meeting had been a misunderstanding, and she’d been able to forgive him for his perceived wrongdoing then; while he had done something genuinely awful this time, it was an accident! If anyone could understand that, it should be a ‘klutz’ like Marinette, right?

In that silence, he could hear the straining hiss of running water further back. A faucet? A shower. Of course! Of course, she came down to the locker rooms so she could wash off the worst of the mess. It had gotten all over her face and in her hair, and all over her outfit too. And chocolate! Even worse! There was no way that wasn’t going to stain, right? He muttered something noncommittal to Alya, barely a response to her sort-of question, but the longer he stood there, the more he wished the floor would just crack open and swallow him whole. If he’d been able to catch her and forget the box, then it would have only been a couple wrecked pairs of shoes, not… whatever hurt she had now.

“She’s a tough girl, you know!” Startled, Adrien looked up to see Alya with her fists propped against her hips, a bright expression on her face. Her lips pulled back in a smile. “Don’t worry about it. She’s not gonna hold it against you, Adrien. Just let her get cleaned up.”

She was right… yes! Of course she was right. Marinette just needed some time to herself to get cleaned up. He could go back upstairs and get her and Alya’s bags and bring them back down. Once he was back, she would probably be done, and he could apologize for ruining her cake and her outfit, and offer to buy her a new one. A new outfit, anyway; he couldn’t imagine Marinette would have gotten a cake like that from anywhere other than her family’s boulangerie. It was a little weird that Alya was trying to cheer _him_ up, when he was the one who caused this whole mess, but he appreciated it nonetheless. He smiled back, some of the anxiety easing out of his shoulders.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Thanks, Alya. Uh, if she—” He scratched at the back of his neck, not quite shaken free of _all_ his nerves. “—if she comes out quick, can you ask her to wait? I, um, I saw your bags were all in the hallway—”

“Oh _shoot,_ I totally forgot—”

“—So I could go. Grab them?” It would be easy enough. “Even if she gets all that frosting out of her hair, she’s going to want to go home to change, right? I could walk her home—or! Or I could call the car! She wouldn’t have to walk home at all if she doesn’t want to, it’s no problem.”

The smile on Alya’s face just got brighter, and Adrien felt a small swell of hope in his chest. If her best friend reacted well, that meant it was a good suggestion, right? He could apologize in the walk over, or in the ride, and she’d know it was sincere. Right?

“ ** _No!_** ”

Adrien and Alya both bolted upright, the uncertain but tentative calm between them shattered in an instant. The shout had come from within the locker room. Alya was already three steps into a run with Adrien two behind her when she came into view. Marinette bolted out from the showers in a dead sprint, water sloughing off her in heavy puddles. The shower was still running. Her shoes made damp _flomp-flomp-flomps_ as she ran, a trail of clean water behind her this time instead of the black crumbles of her ruined cake. She’d gone into her shower fully dressed, but it was not running out of it in such a sodden state that surprised him.

Between one _flomp_ of her shoe and the next, time seemed to freeze. Marinette was bolting from the showers as though escaping a fire; Alya was running towards her friend, but Marinette’s speed would have her blow past Alya's position, out of reach; Adrien, his two steps behind, had more time. Marinette’s hair was undone from its usual pigtails and soaked through, hanging heavy and limp across her shoulders. Her face was scrubbed clear of the frosting that had masked her before, but her eyes were puffy from crying. Her vision was unfocused – she didn’t see Alya coming towards her, and when Adrien tried to reach out to grab her arm, she pushed right past him without a second glance. Her hands were pressed tight over her ears; she didn’t hear Alya calling at her back for her to _slow down!_ or Adrien’s strangled _wait!_

If he thought he was anxious before, it was nothing compared to the panic that flooded his system now; as Marinette slipped past him and out the hallway, he spun towards Alya, heart thudding somewhere in his throat—

But Alya was already running, yanking her phone out of her pocket as she passed him. She’d seen it too.

Adrien waited – waited, let himself stand there, looking like an idiot, doing nothing, for the seconds it took for Alya to skid off on Marinette’s heels – until he’d waited long enough.

“Plagg!”

They’d both seen it. The thing she was running from.

The akuma, with purple wings fluttering in chase.

“Transform me!”


	3. Chapter 3

There was a complete and utter lack of commotion. Aside from the slapdash cake trail coming into the locker room, and the much more even distribution of water puddles leading out, everything was fine. Normal. Students were in their classrooms, and Chat Noir’s better hearing could pick up the narration of four separate lectures, blending together into a single academic drone of numbers and terminology. There were no torn open lockers or damaged walls, nobody shouting as they tried to hurriedly evacuate the building, no strange power outages or wild voices or any sign of _any_ kind that this was anything other than an ordinary Tuesday.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

The two trails split – even in her distress, Marinette had no reason to go back to their classroom – and Chat followed the thinning path of water instead. She had been dripping less with every step, so the streaks of light reflecting off her puddles were smaller and smaller as he went, but he was glad that he wasn’t trying to tail her on carpet. Then again, normally there’d be more evidence to follow than just a girl’s failure to towel off properly. The longer it took, the more unease he felt. Not just as Adrien, knowing that it was her embarrassment and hurt feelings from his carelessness that left her targeted by the akuma, but as Chat Noir as well. Had there ever been a time he’d seen the akuma _before_ the person was transformed into a super-villain?

There was something on the floor. Red. Chat slowed his run in an instant, crouching down to examine the bright shock of color. It wasn’t liquid, so it wasn't blood – it wasn’t the right shade for blood anyway – but it mystified him. It looked like…

“String?”

No, that wasn’t right. The red was the woven casing around something white; he pinched one end and pulled at the other, and it stretched to more than double its length for elastic.

“It’s one of Marinette’s hair… things.” Model he might be, but he wasn’t a girl; Chat Noir had no clue what these were usually called. Elastics? Ponytail-ties? Hair-bands? He shook his head, groaning. The name of it didn’t matter. What did, though, was that it was discarded like this. It was already broken.

With the elastic still in his hand he continued on, but turning down another hallway revealed another discard: another red band, split into two pieces instead of merely a broken circle. The first one might have been dismissed as a snap, but this _had_ to be deliberate. For both of them to break like this? Her hair wasn’t even up in her pigtails when she ran past him. Next, upstairs, was a shoe, pink, sodden and dark with water, the black lacing around its top line torn roughly away from the body. The stitching was all pulled loose; the black threads seemed almost to reach out, and the fray was clearly new.

“What in the world…”

He left the hair bands with the shoe and continued on at a quicker pace; the pathway through the school was a little erratic, but eventually the trail brought Chat to the entrance of the library. There _were_ students here, though… and it was still quiet. Maybe this villain had sound-dampening powers? There could be something going on, and he wouldn’t be able to hear it – the other students wouldn’t know anything was amiss at all, and they’d be in danger, too.

Well, he’d always wanted to pull this, anyway. With some measure of play-acting nonchalance, Chat Noir leaned against the wall beside the library entrance, whistling in his best innocent pitch, looking left and right for anyone walking past. Nobody. The coast was clear. He dragged his hand slowly, _slooowly_ up the wall, and sharply tugged the fire alarm.

The quiet immediately shattered. The alarm signal blared from every corner of the school, in every classroom; his cat ears flattened against his skull, and even he had to wince for the shrill puncture of sound. In only a moment, the cacophony grew; classroom doors throughout the building slammed open as students were forced into their usual evacuation proceedings. When it was the library door that swung open, Chat Noir sprang upwards, jumping and catching onto the top of the door, perched on palms and toes in a low crouch as the students filed out. He could hear the siren from within the library, but when the crowd had finally gone out, he saw neither Alya nor Marinette exit with the others. They must both still be inside – if Marinette was still only distraught, Alya wouldn’t leave, but if she’d been transformed into a villain, Alya _definitely_ wouldn’t leave. (He was a subscriber. He knew these things.)

He dropped down and darted into the library, keeping close to walls and bookshelves. He’d thought any sound would have been better than that anxious silence, but he was sure regretting that now. His teeth were clenched, and he could feel a muscle spasm near his eye, beneath the mask. Where _were_ they?

The other shoe dropped. Well. It fell. The other shoe fell, hitting Chat Noir right on the crown of his head, a hard heel and a damp press of fabric that bounced clear of him, and then it dropped to the floor. He bent to examine this too, eyes quickly taking in the details. It was in much worse shape than the last one; the sole had been severed from the body, hanging on by only the glue at the toe area, and the fabric was slashed in multiple places. It’d fallen from the upper landing; throwing it aside, Chat went to the staircase. There was no more water to follow, but there was nowhere else to go. A couple steps up and he finally heard voices.

“—ping, it’s just getting worse! You have to stop—”

That sounded like Alya—

“I _can’t,_ I can’t—” And that was Marinette, her voice hoarse from crying. There was no confidence of a villain in that tone, no hatred. She sounded _terrified._ “I won’t…”

“Give me those! Marinette, you’re going to hurt somebody—”

“ ** _No!_**   I’m not. I’m not gonna—you can’t make me—!”

“You’re gonna run out of things to destroy! _Marin—!_ ”

There was a commotion of physical force; Alya cried out, and something hard skidded across the tile floor. Something snapped, metal prying from metal, and two things went skittering as well. Chat Noir was right there at the door when it suddenly flew open; cat-like grace (and an instinctive leap to avoid a broken nose) sent him sideways over the railing in a cartwheeling dive, one hand clutching a support bar. Alya didn’t see him; as he watched, she slammed the door closed behind her, grabbing a nearby chair and propping it against the door beneath the handle.

_She’s locking her in there?_

“You’ve got to hold on, okay?” Alya was shouting to be heard through the closed door and over the siren; she slammed her palm against the door for emphasis. “I’m going to get help, so hang tight!”

Without waiting for an answer, Alya sprinted for the stairs and the library exit; Chat Noir didn’t wait for her to leave before he swung himself back onto the upper landing, dislodging the chair from the door. He didn’t know what he was expecting, but he was inside in only a moment, entering by opening the door by the handle rather than kicking it down. His heel squeaked on the wet floor.

The girls’ bathroom. In retrospect, it was really kind of obvious that they would end up in one of these. It was a smaller one, brightly colored and brightly lit. All the sinks were polished white and turned off, and the three stalls were all at idle states of closed. None were bolted shut. It was a small bathroom, so each thing that did not belong was immediately obvious. Against the wall beneath one of the sinks was a spot of red, a ladybug charm attached to a cell phone—Alya’s—with a screen shattered so badly it had probably been thrown against the piping. At his foot was one side of a pair of scissors: the left handle and its attached blade. The other, more bent, was further from the door, and nearer to Marinette.

Human, crying, _normal_ Marinette.

She was sitting in a sprawl against the far wall, beneath the frosted opaque window. Her bare feet were pushing against the floor in thoughtless kicks, trying to propel her body further backward, but the wall was firm behind her. Her hair was still down, still wet, but more messy; her hands were tangled up in it, palms pressed hard over her ears against the siren. She looked exhausted, eyes bloodshot from tears and her cheeks stained with them, but it was the fear on her face that felt like a lance through him. She hadn’t even noticed his entrance, and it was possible she hadn’t realized Alya’s departure, either: her eyes were fixed on the flight of the akuma.

He’d never seen anything like it. Breaking a cursed item would send one out in a hurry, but it was nothing unusual for the movement of a butterfly. This one seemed more like a _wasp;_ its wing beats were too fast, creating a buzz that he could hear from across the room, even beneath the wail of the fire alarm. Its flight was quick, erratic. Frustrated. _Angry._

It disappeared into her jacket, staining the gray fabric black. She pressed her hands harder over her ears, hyperventilating. Her bare feet kicked the tile. In an instant Chat Noir was sliding towards her, already on his knees before he was in arm’s reach. He skidded to a stop, nearly upon her, and he wasted no time. He took her arms by the wrists, below the darkening cuffs of her sleeves, and he held her there firm. He understood. In this instant, he finally understood. She hadn’t evaded the akuma this whole time; it had captured her already. It had taken both her hair ties, and both her shoes. The scissors. It had already cursed her in the locker room. Marinette broke each cursed item on her own.

Without any hero to save her, she broke free – but without any hero to save her, the akuma had no reason to stop. Marinette was going to run out of things to destroy.

“ ’s not my name,” she said, her face pulled into a scowl and her eyes glassy, unfocused. Chat pulled her hands away from her head; he could see the way her nails were starting to dig into her skin, as though she could pull corruption out of her with physical force.

“Fear not, my dear.” He spoke too loud, held her wrists too tight, and smiled too brightly. The curves of his claws pressed against her arms, where the distance between skin and bone was at its thinnest. He needed her to see him. “Your daring knight is here to rescue you.”

She was breathing too fast, and her hands strained against his grip, but when Marinette forced her eyes closed, they opened with a fresh sheen of tears and the clarity of recognition. “Chat Noir? You’re—”

“Here to rescue you,” he repeated, watching her eyes, shifting his hands to take hers completely. He wrapped his fingers over her palms, pressing them tight in his grip, and once more tried pulling her arms back, away from her face. Her expression twisted, a look of relief turning into a scowl, a moment of baring teeth replaced by biting at her lower lip. She stopped kicking at the floor, but her whole body was held tense. Her hands wrapped around his with the strength of grip reserved for life preservers.

“He wants the, the Miraculous. Your ring. My. The. Uh.” The tension was most visible between her eyebrows, her face pulling tight for the conflict; he felt her grip tighten on his hands, where her thumb folded over his fingers, felt it pressing into the face of his ring. Chat Noir swallowed, but did not let go of her.

“You’re doing great,” he said instead, cutting her off. He dragged one of his legs forward, starting to rise up. He was still on one knee, while the other foot planted firm against the ground; it left him crouching over her, with her legs bent like brackets on the floor, but they couldn’t stay like this. As Chat Noir slowly climbed to his feet, he kept tight hold of her, pulling her up with him. Water continued to drip from the cuffs of her pants and the loose tips of her hair. She was shaking. “You’re doing really great, Marinette.”

“He keeps giving me names.” She was babbling, but as long as she was talking to Chat, her vision stayed focused. Her whole jacket was black now, even the inner lining, where the cuffs were rolled up and along her folded collar. He knew it wasn’t possible, not with the akuma absorbed into her blazer, but he’d swear he could still hear the beating of butterfly wings, too fast and too loud. The sirens seemed quieter on the opposite side of the closed door, but those phantom wings lingered in his ears. He got her standing; his thoughts were racing. There had to be something he could do to help her right now, and recalling the first time they’d met – the first time Marinette had met Chat Noir, rather – he pulled one of her hands to him, grazing a kiss over her knuckles.

“The only one who should be giving you names is me, Princess.”

It had flustered her back then, he remembered; the more he kept her thoughts centered on the here and now, the less she’d be drawn back into her own head, where her pain and Papillon’s empty promises were the loudest. He saw a flicker of it in her eyes, and the way she tried to draw that hand back, and _only_ that hand.

Chat grinned.

“Give me your jacket.”

Even her weak retreat froze at his words, and though he could see the tension in her jaw for how tightly she clenched her teeth, there was a softening, widening around her eyes. Surprise, uncertainty. “What?” was the most she could manage.

He let go of her right hand. Chat reached forward, brushing the hair off her shoulder and with a delicate touch pinched the folded collar of her blazer. Too harsh and he would risk cutting it; Marinette was running out of things to destroy.

“I can’t purify the akuma,” he admitted, keeping his gaze fixed on her eyes, watching the minute way her pupils kept constricting and dilating in millimeter increments, how the quickness of her breath shifted her position. “But if I take it away from you, the connection should break. Once I find her, Ladybug can finish the job, and everything will go back to normal.”

“Ladybug?”

“Ladybug.” He smiled, voice lilting higher for a tease. “Surely _you_ know who Ladybug is, Marinette.”

Her hand in his was trembling; the one he released moved up, trying to brush his hand from her collar. Her gaze was getting unfocused again—Chat let go, instead pressing his gloved hand against her face. He couldn’t feel the dampness of her hair, or the fever to her cheek, but those things didn’t matter. She didn’t deserve to be tormented like this.

“Give me your jacket.” He squeezed her hand. “Let me take this from you.”

She was focusing again; the movement in her eyes was the rapid darting over his face, reading his expression like words on a page. She was scared, frightened, but Marinette always kept her head in a crisis. It was almost enough to make him laugh – even with a furious akuma trying to pull her heart into darkness, she was assessing the risk.

“Chat… you. You think this will work?”

“I know it will work.” He had no idea if it would work. It had to work. He was the hero here; whatever uncertainty he felt, whatever anxious guilt he carried for putting her in this position, he couldn’t let her see it. She needed to trust him. He needed her to trust him.

“Please?”

_Please_ halted her scrutiny; _please_ stilled her tremble. _Please_ steadied her. Marinette blinked two, three times in rapid succession, and inched forward; she loosened her grip on his hand, so she was no longer touching his ring. Careful, cautious, he let go of her; he put his hands instead on her, just above her clavicles, and slipped his claws beneath the faux lapels. The wet fabric clung to her, but Marinette moved with him, her shoulders rolling back to loosen the garment, arms going straight at her sides as he pushed the jacket off her shoulders. He tugged at the rolled cuffs at her elbows, where it clung most tightly, until the jacket slipped loose and she was finally free of it.

Before it could fall to the floor, Chat tugged it his way, draping the black garment over his left arm; Marinette lurched on her feet, and he had to wrap his right arm around her waist to keep her upright.

“Leave everything to me, Princess,” he said, lowering her back down to the floor before she fell, his left arm extended away from her in a mimicked bow. “You’re in _purr-_ fectly capable paws.” He flashed a smile with teeth to go with it, and already she was looking a little more lively (if that sort of narrowed-eye glower could count as lively). He couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t be such a sourpuss, Marinette! This will work. I _purr-_ omise.”

“Lazy…” She was still forcing herself to blink, and she scrubbed at her cheek with the heel of her palm. “You already used that…”

She sounded less distressed than before. Even just the removal of physical contact helped, but this much wouldn’t be enough. He needed to get this as far away from her as he could, until Ladybug could purify it completely. He released Marinette to withdraw his staff, and with a tap he extended it long enough to manipulate the high latches of the window. A couple knocks this way and that, and a hard shove with his shoulder, and the whole pane swung open. Chat jumped up to get one foot onto the ledge, the other already dangling outside, and he gave her a more proper bow from this higher perch.

“I would give you my a- _paw-_ logies now, but _purr-_ haps I should save them?” He recognized that look; it only made Chat grin wider. If she were still wearing her shoes, he was pretty sure Marinette would risk losing both of them to throw them at him now. “It would give me _claws_ to see you again, _Meow_ -rinette.”

“I’ll push you out if you don’t stop,” she said, but there was relief in her tone. She was almost smiling. He wanted her true smile to come back soon.

And the sooner he found Ladybug, the sooner that would be, so it was with a final flourish that he leapt from the window, staff extending to vault him from the school grounds and into the city proper. He just needed to find Ladybug, and then everything would go back to normal.

He’d even let her push him out a window if she still wanted to.


	4. Chapter 4

The plan worked, miraculously. Of course. While it took much, much more time than Chat expected, so long as that was the worst of his complaints, he couldn’t say much. Leaving the school was easy, but realizing the short-term nature of his fire alarm solution, he had to backtrack to keep the building as empty as possible. Sure, he had the akuma, but what if someone stumbled upon Marinette? He had no idea if physical distance would be enough in normal circumstances, and his own miserable part in this play left him less inclined to risk it escalating.

As such, he’d been forced to fall back, catching the attention of the principal and a few others, and in his concern he’d _merely implied_ an unfortunate assessment of the building’s structural integrity. You never knew when a super-villain would bring the roof down, after all. It was enough that before he left, he could see many of the students retreating towards their own homes – at least until lunch break. That seemed like plenty of time to get things wrapped up.

It was not plenty of time at all.

Chat Noir had sprinted his way through Paris, retreating far enough from the school that it was a distant landmark from his vantage point, and he’d called for Ladybug. Or: he _tried_ to call for Ladybug. She wasn’t transformed on the first call, which wasn’t a surprise. Marinette hadn’t even turned into a villain, and there was no panic or distress to call Ladybug’s attention out of her hidden, civilian life. His second, third, sixth, tenth calls went unanswered as well. Time kept ticking on, and Chat tried to lengthen the gap between each attempt, but his anxiety only continued to build. The blazer dried during his wait; it remained heavy. His arm ached for bearing it. His worry kept spiking, one minute content in patience, and the next _impatient,_ pacing and leaping from one building to another, hands shaking and his staff leaving impact craters in the street.

“Hello? Chat Noir?” Fourteenth time was the charm. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“Pining for your company,” he said with a forced ease, a languid length of syllable. While he’d called her over a dozen times, he wasn’t _dying._ He kicked his toes against the ground as he spoke, watching the skyline. “I have a present for you, my lady, and it’s rather pressing.”

“A pressing present? Is it for garlic or for sandwiches?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of… a butterfly press?” A weak joke, but waiting had left him more worn out than if he’d spent that time fighting. It was difficult to _protect_ the infected blazer, rather than destroy it outright, and the longer he spent with it, the more difficult it became. Somewhere after hour one, he wondered if an akuma could be destroyed; somewhere before hour three, he decided he didn’t want to test that by himself.

“Oh?” Her voice drawled the vowel, close to her usual flirtatious tone, but not quite there. His ear twitched. The fact the screen of his staff wasn’t displaying video was a little unusual. Alarming? Or was she only in a place that might give him some hint to her identity? Or was Chat merely looking for more things to worry about? It was probably harmless. “Don’t leave me on pins and needles, Chat.”

“The villain’s already taken care of, and the city is safe. I’m waiting for you at the Arc de Triomphe.”

“All that without me? If you're sure you need me, I’ll be right over. Don’t stray too far!”

“I could never stray from _you,_ my lady!”

The call disconnected; Chat collapsed his staff, flopping down to sit with his legs hanging over the edge, letting his hands rest on the carved brow of one of the numerous lion grotesques, claws tapping at the stone mane. There had been something off about her voice, but maybe that was in response to his own mood? It seemed like they had both been playing to part for the sake of _playing_ the parts, rather than meaning them. He glanced at the blazer. It was one of Marinette’s favorites, probably; he saw her wearing it all the time. The inner lining was usually white, spotted, but now was pitch black, darker even than his suit. It didn’t reflect light properly.

But for all Chat Noir’s impatience for Ladybug’s arrival, he still completely missed when it happened. Maybe she swung up from the opposite direction; maybe she didn’t call his name twice as she approached. It was too embarrassing to ask when she got there, when he was so absorbed in thought he didn't notice her presence until the red spinning face of her yo-yo dropped in front of his eyes, bopping him in the nose on a gentle swing. It didn’t hurt, but he played it up – Chat placed his free hand over his face, groaning in exaggeration as he looked up.

Ladybug smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“I heard that cats will sleep anywhere, but I didn’t know you could do it with your eyes open.”

She moved out of the way before he made the first motion, so when Chat rolled backwards from his perch and to his feet, Ladybug stood to the side, arms held in a languid cross, yo-yo zipping up its line to return to her hand.

“My a- _paw-_ logies.” He was glad to see her, but would be gladder when this was done with, so it was with less flourish than usual that Chat Noir bowed, the jacket still folded over his forward arm. When he straightened, he pulled it free, letting the black fabric hang loose from his hand. Ladybug blinked, looking at the jacket with her head tilting to the side, then looking back at Chat. Her brow was furrowed behind her mask; it was slight, but her arms tightened in their cross.

“You said you’ve already taken care of the super-villain?”

He shook his head, frowning. “Really, I did nothing. She took care of it herself. I’m merely the _claw_ -rier today, _et voilà._ One akuma for the lady in red.”

As he shifted his hold of the jacket, taking it in both hands, Ladybug’s arms dropped from her cross as she backed up several paces, giving herself room to begin swinging her yo-yo. He hadn’t said anything about the akuma’s temperament, but perhaps the unusualness of the situation prompted her to be cautious. Either way, Chat was grateful.

“I’m sure you did a lot more than nothing, _chaton._ Don’t sell yourself short.”

Okay, double that gratitude. There was a softness and certainty to her assurance that made his heart flutter. Even without knowing what had happened, or how things had gone, Ladybug’s faith in him was stronger than his negative self-assessment. It was enough to put a smile back on his face. But he couldn’t let the levity distract him completely; with a nod for cue, Chat yanked at the blazer, ripping it in half as easily as though it were paper.

He had never seen an akuma fly so quickly. It tore out from the blazer as though it were on fire, and he had to stop thinking in terms of insects, hornets or locusts or dragonflies, and instead think in terms of birds, of bullets. Releasing it was the firing of a bow, and the akuma flew straight for Ladybug, a formless black arrow through the space between them. Ladybug yelped in panic and threw herself off the arch. Her yo-yo sped upwards and fastened on one of the stone faces at the very height of the structure, swinging her out of danger.

“Did you take that akuma out for espresso before I got here?!” she shouted, flipping through the air and sticking her landing on the higher platform of the arch. The akuma had a difficult time changing direction, so it overshot Ladybug by the length of a bus before it managed to get turned around, zipping once more through the air with single-minded targeting. Chat bounded up to Ladybug’s elevation, bringing his staff into a rapid propeller spin. If she couldn’t snatch it this time, he would at least shield them from its attack. That was what this had to be, wasn’t it? It had never turned Marinette into a villain, so it couldn’t replicate like the first akuma they’d faced, but in the absence of its human host, could it really be trying to seize the Miraculous on its own?

“If you want me to take _you_ on my next coffee date, my lady, you should return my calls sooner!” He could hear the panic in his own voice, but Ladybug steadied.

“ _Down!_ ” 

He threw himself down. Without hesitation, he slammed elbows against the stone, Ladybug’s yo-yo sailing over his head to snatch the akuma mid-air. Her aim was true, and Ladybug’s victorious _gotcha_ left Chat deflating, sighing out a cloud of tension that felt so much bigger than his body could handle. He could melt. He could lay himself into a grave here for relief.

Ladybug’s palm lay flat between his shoulder blades. Between his suit and hers, he couldn’t feel much besides the shape of her hand, the heat and pressure of it, but he took comfort in it. He heard her sit down beside him, but he was content to just lay here with his face to the ground.

“… So that was. New,” she said, and though he could not see her face, he could picture clearly the scrunch there would be to it, her smile pulling to one side while one of her eyes narrowed behind her mask; uncertain and unsure how to feel about it.

He did not nod, but he lifted one of his hands to gesture while the rest of him remained a plank of a cat. A pancat. A catbread. A furtilla? No, those all sucked.

“Very new,” he agreed, and the tension bled out of him when her gloved hand combed into his hair, scratching at his scalp with idle, beloved familiarity. “She never turned into a super-villain.”

“You’re sure?”

“ _Paw_ -sitive.” He didn’t need to think about that one. “I saw the akuma before it went into her blazer. It was strange then too. Like it was already frustrated.”

He heard her hum; he closed his eyes.

“You think akuma have emotions?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one act like that before. I’ve never seen anyone do what she did, either.”

“She?”

“Ma—ah.” He couldn’t say Marinette was his classmate, or a school friend; she had a lot of friends from what he could tell, but he couldn’t tell Ladybug anything that would narrow down his own identity. But Ladybug knew of Marinette; she’d been the target of more than one super-villain’s attention, and had even sent Chat Noir to act as her bodyguard once before. He hurried to complete the name before Ladybug realized just how long of a pause this was. “Marinette. Dupain-Cheng. She—”

Had been locked in a bathroom by her best friend, trapped in the assault of the akuma and Papillon’s ambition. Was only now, _now,_ assuredly free from that evil influence.

What was he _doing?_

“—I have to go,” he said instead, abruptly pushing himself up to his hands and knees, scurrying upright. He felt her hand leave him before he’d moved much, but once he was to his feet, he froze. Ladybug was looking at him, but he couldn’t read her expression at all. It wasn’t the sadness of melancholy, but… he didn’t know what it _could_ be. He wanted to stop, wanted to ask, but, but, but Marinette had been left waiting long enough. He had to go see her. He had to make sure she was alright.

God, if she wasn’t alright—

Chat turned sharply, dropping down to the lower outcropping. Oh. Right.

“Oh, Ladybug, you haven’t… uhh… finished.” She peered over the ledge down at him, and he gestured to the ripped-up jacket pieces at his feet. Even so, it took her a full ten seconds of confused staring before she caught on.

“Oh! You’re right! Yeesh… This whole thing threw me off!” After she got to her feet, he watched Ladybug throw her yo-yo into the air, and with her cry it exploded outward in a shower of light, a million sparkling ladybugs flying through the air, sweeping around them, around Marinette’s jacket, down the legs of the arch to the street below and traveling outward. The wounds Chat had inflicted on the city streets in his impatient frustration vanished, and as they flew off through town, he hoped everything Marinette had sacrificed to escape the akuma would be righted as well.

Ladybug's earrings beeped, starting her countdown.

“Chat?”

He was already scooping up Marinette’s restored blazer, preparing his staff for his trip back towards the school, but he paused at her call, looking back over his shoulder. “Yes?”

She was giving him that same look. “I… just wanted to say I’m sorry. For today. For… how long it took me to get here. I’m the only one who can purify the akuma, and you had to… do everything by yourself. I couldn’t be there when you needed me.”

At first, Chat frowned. She wasn’t wrong. As the minutes and hours ticked by, him burdened with custody of Marinette’s akuma, he had swung between worry and irritation at how long it took before he heard even one word from Ladybug. But at the same time—

“You _were_ here when I needed you, Bug.” Her earrings beeped a second time, and Chat gave her an embellished bow. “But for now, I must bid you a _-mew._ ”

Ladybug slapped her own face, dragging her hand down over her mask, pulling at her cheek with such force she was probably trying to take her whole cute face off to have something to throw. “That was terrible, even for you! Shoo!”

It had to be good enough; Chat didn’t want to waste any more time. With a final nod to Ladybug, he leapt free of the scene, bounding up to the rooftops of Paris back towards the school. If he ran fast enough, if he got there quickly enough, maybe he would beat the anxiety once more nipping at his heels.

God, if she _wasn’t_ alright…


	5. Chapter 5

If the school day had continued, it would be almost over by the time Chat Noir returned. It had not continued. There had been no all-clear, no obvious display of a day saved, and it _was_ only Tuesday; the work missed today could be made up during the rest of the week, assuming no more problems arose on the campus grounds. There were a few police officers stationed at the main entrance, though Chat Noir only recognized Sabrina’s father, Roger, among them. He slunk away from the public steps, sticking close to the outer wall, opting instead for the quicker entrance. The open bathroom window was easy to spot, and easier to reach for Chat Noir; he planted his staff to the ground and let it extend in a rapid climb, like hitching a ride on the mystical beanstalk rather than climb its height.

He stepped in without flourish, but it didn’t matter. There was nobody to witness his entrance.

“Marinette?”

There was no answer. As he reattached his staff to his belt, his eyes swept the small bathroom: like before, none of the stalls were closed or locked, and there was nobody hiding out of sight. He felt an instant sting of disappointment, of concern, but he did his best to push it down. It took him a few minutes to get to the school from the Arc de Triomphe; even at his speed, Marinette would have had plenty of time to shake from her daze and rush off somewhere else.

Even so, coming in this way was for the best. The scissors he’d come upon here before, split and broken, were now whole; Chat crouched down to retrieve them, giving them a customary test by snipping at air. Judging by their dull appearance, they were probably grabbed off some table from the library below.

As he knelt there, Chat spotted it out of the corner of his eye: the cell phone. Previously discarded with a cracked screen, it looked now as good as new. “This is… Alya’s phone,” he said to himself, thinking aloud in the empty room; he crawled to the sinks to retrieve it. The ladybug charm clinked against the phone, bobbing gently against his fingers, and Chat’s mouth quirked for the reminder of Ladybug’s yo-yo. Tapping the power button turned the screen on right away, displaying a cute wallpaper for Alya's lock screen, with a prominent shortcut to turn on the camera. Instinctively he glanced at the battery level – 57%, no missed calls, but a string of new text messages and web updates – and he just-as-instinctively tapped it back off. It wasn’t _his_ phone. Chat was halfway to putting it back down when he paused, giving the phone another, more critical look.

“She was recording Marinette… and the akuma. She has a video.” His eyes widened. If the miracle restored the phone, but didn’t delete the footage, then… then there was a record of what Marinette did. How she managed to elude the akuma’s influence.

“But… they’re best friends. Would she really save it?” Chat stood in the girl’s bathroom, Alya’s phone in one hand, a stolen pair of scissors in the other, a girl’s gray blazer draped over his arm; as he talked to himself (and his two reflections, in mirrors suspended above the bathroom sinks), he gesticulated, the ladybug charm occasionally swinging and hitting his hand. “Alya saw Marinette get humiliated in front of the whole class. There’s no way she’d post a live broadcast of Marinette like that…”

Right?

“But she wouldn’t miss a chance to record Ladybug, either.”

Chat bit at his claws for thought, frowning at the phone. Was she planning to wait to publish until after Ladybug showed up? Would she have deleted the footage before her phone was broken?

Was there any point to him debating this _now,_ when he still hadn’t found Marinette? With a growl of frustration, his impatient concern spiking back, Chat Noir shoved the phone into his pocket as he rushed out of the bathroom, flipping over the guardrail rather than take the stairs. He discarded the scissors on the nearest table, but before he was able to leave the library, he once more found her pink shoe. This was the one that had been cut to pieces, but now was completely whole.

“… She left barefoot?” He blinked. “Oh… okay…?” She was a strange girl, and she seemed forgetful, but _barefoot?_

Chat already had her blazer, so he held onto the shoe as well. Really, _had_ she left barefoot? Was she still disoriented after the akuma was purified? Had she left before Ladybug had finished? Had taking the akuma away from her given her any respite from Papillon's bribes? The questions kept piling up in the back of his mind, sticking in his throat; he didn’t think they were going to stop until he saw her with his own eyes, safe and sound and herself again.

Her other shoe was where he’d left it, with both her hair-elastics, all repaired. With the new additions, it was getting a little more difficult to carry it all. He wound up putting the elastics on his wrist, and wrapped the blazer around the shoes in a small bundle that he tucked under his arm. Still, there was no sign of her. Chat retraced the paths from before, calling out her name, but she wasn’t in the locker room, or the gymnasium, or the adjacent halls or rooms. It didn’t seem like she stayed in the school at all, but Chat couldn’t leave until he checked one last place.

Their homeroom.

There was no trail of cake leading the way; the hallways were clear of that damage. It wasn’t until just outside the door that there was anything astray, but it was the same disarray as when Marinette, Alya, and Adrien had all run from the classroom. Alya’s bag, which he’d tripped over on the way out; Marinette’s book bag, discarded a few paces away from the door, leaning against the wall.

Chat forced himself to sigh, trying to expel some of the tension in his chest. Through the windows, he could see that there was nobody in the classroom, but now that he was here, he needed to go in. He opened the door. With nobody inside, or in the hallway, or in the _building,_ with nobody on the campus except Roger and the other cops outside, the room was quiet. Almost silent.

The door slipped closed behind him; his ears caught the buzzing of wings.

“Ahh—?? No, no, no—”

The shoes and blazer hit the ground with a thump; his heart was _pounding,_ aching in his chest. He had his staff out and spinning before he knew what he was doing, but no, there was nobody in the room, it couldn’t be an akuma, there was nobody to target, Marinette wasn’t here, and—

There was no one here. No one was in danger. The sound was all wrong. The wings were smaller. It was different. It was okay; they were only flies.

The window had been left open. The buzzing was coming from Mme. Bustier’s desk, from an open, wide box. There was a small cloud of the pests flying above the box, but the louder noise came from inside it. Chat Noir pressed his hand to his heart to force it to slow, collapsing his staff and putting it away once more. He approached the desk.

Inside the box was Marinette’s cake – or, what was left of it. It was a rectangle, roughly, dark for chocolate with spots of white for cream, with some blues and yellows and pinks in thin bands of icing across the top. It had probably said something at one point, likely decorated with cute sugar flowers, but whatever it looked like before was lost forever. The cake was already cut, for starters, but between the flies and whatever sneaking birds might have made their way in, it was a lost cause. The miracle had only restored it a little while ago, but nature moved quickly. Chat sighed.

“That was a heart _a-cat_ I didn’t need,” he muttered, rolling his shoulders and shaking his head. He was still on edge, but this was as sure a sign as any that Marinette hadn’t come through here at all. There wasn’t anything left for him here. Still – thanks to his fire alarm, all the students had been forced to abandon their belongings, so the desks and benches still bore the echo of the morning’s students. He glanced at his own bag, at his desk in the first row, and turned back to the cake. He didn’t know if the custodial staff would come through, but… he didn’t want to leave the cake here like this. If nobody took it, it would look worse by morning, and the last thing Marinette would need tomorrow was a reminder of this humiliation. Chat took the box, sidestepped towards the bins, and dumped the whole thing into the trash.

For safety, he put the now-full (of cake) trash bin out into the hallway, bringing Alya’s bag into the room to leave on her desk. With Marinette’s book bag he debated his options, but eventually he moved that to her seat as well. He could take the blazer and the shoes while he looked for her, but anything more than that was too many different things to carry easily. There was nothing he needed from his own bag, and he knew that if his was the only one missing tomorrow, it would be more of a hassle to explain than any benefit having his history textbook on-hand warranted. There was nothing else; once he had the shoes and jacket bundled up secure again under his arm, Chat Noir took the quick escape through the classroom window, taking to the roofs with his usual feline speed.

“If I were Marinette,” he said, leaping effortlessly from one building to the next, even with an arm hindered by his cargo, “and I just had the worst day of my life, I would…”

He paused. That was easy, wasn’t it? Marinette would go home. It wasn’t far from the school, and she could get there easily on foot. Even without shoes. Her parents were kind, and supportive, and cared for her very much; he barely knew them, and he knew that much. Why would she go anywhere else? As for him, he’d visited enough times to know the way. It wasn’t even five minutes later that he was dropping in on the Dupain-Cheng doorstep – or, more technically, the T&S Boulangerie Pâtisserie's doorstep. It always seemed like he was entering this building from a different entrance every time, but for this, the front door was best.

The bell chimed as he entered.


	6. Chapter 6

It was the scent of bread that greeted Chat Noir first – the dense, heady aroma, warm and comforting. It was the sort of atmosphere that would make anybody feel at home, even if home never smelled as inviting as this. The second greeting came from the woman behind the main counter, reorganizing sweets in a shelved display case.

Her _Welcome!_ was cheerful, spying him through the glass, but when she leaned out from behind it to see him properly, her eyes grew wide for surprised recognition, her countenance quickly shifting into one of concern. “Oh! You are… Chat Noir! Is there anything we can do to help?”

Quick to volunteer her assistance, even without knowing what the circumstances might be; Chat could see where Marinette got it. With his bundle still tucked under one arm, he raised his other in a placating gesture, a reassuring smile coming to his face.

“Worry not, Madame; evil has already been vanquished today. There’s no danger.” Mme. Cheng pressed a hand to her heart for relief, relaxing some, and she moved out from behind the display counter. It was middling afternoon now, well past the lunch hour, so there was no one else in the shop for the moment. It was a little relieving. Chat didn’t know how well his already frayed nerves would do with the anxiety of a line. “I only came to ask… has your daughter, Marinette, returned home yet?”

“Marinette?” Mme. Cheng gave him an assessing look, but it was incredibly brief. “Yes… she arrived a short while ago. Do you need to speak with her? Oh, but…” she tapped her first two fingers against her mouth, looking elsewhere for thought. “She’ll still be in there for a while. Why don’t you go on upstairs? My husband will make you something to eat while you wait.”

In no more than thirty seconds, Chat had gone from patron to house guest; his eyes widened, and taken off guard, he waved his hand once more.

“No, no, I don’t mean to be any trouble, I only—”

But Mme. Cheng only smiled at him, folding her hands together in front of her lap. “I’m sure you’re hungry. And you would rather speak to her in person, wouldn’t you?”

His mouth clicked shut. She was right. Even if her talk of Marinette seemed untroubled, implying that she’d come home in a state that _wasn’t_ troubling, he _would_ rather see that everything had turned out alright with his own eyes… and he _was_ hungry. Starving. Famished. Breakfast had been so long ago, and he hadn’t even thought to get lunch during all the time he was waiting for Ladybug.

He didn’t know what gave him away – a light in his eyes, or a twitch of his ears, or a sway in the belt-tail behind him – but she only smiled a little brighter, tilting her head towards the back. “That door on the right leads upstairs. Please make yourself at home, and watch your step heading back.”

There was a small step down from the storefront to the kitchen area; as Chat Noir walked in, the scent of bread and the warmth of the building only grew stronger. He didn’t think anything was baking now, but the ambience of it surrounded him in a comforting, welcoming way. If this was the kind of place Marinette lived, day in and out, it was no wonder she was so generous and warm.

He heard the front door bell chime behind him as he opened that rear door, and he ascended the house steps slowly. His eyes took in the details of the décor as he climbed; the warm colors and the narrow, smallness of the space. Cozy. Cute. It was the most at-ease he’d felt the entire day. When Chat Noir reached the top of the landing, knocking on the closed living-area door, he was greeted almost immediately by the towering form of M. Dupain, who looked down at him with some measure of confusion.

“Chat Noir?”

It was a quicker explanation: Mme. Cheng had said that Marinette was home, but occupied, and had told him to wait for her upstairs. M. Dupain did not give Chat the same sort of evaluation she did; Chat had scarcely gotten through half of Marinette’s name before he was being led inside, and by the time he had finished, he had already been made to sit at the raised table. Chat Noir _definitely_ didn’t mention that he was promised food, but no sooner had he taken the seat than did the man place a croissant before him. Chat set Marinette’s belongings on the adjacent stool, distracted completely by the comforting ease permeating even this upper story of the bakery, as well as his own growing hunger. The belt-tail coiled around the leg of the stool as he slowly broke apart the croissant with reverence. Had any croissant ever looked this good? Had _anything_ ever looked this good?

One bite and he was in love. He was never getting croissants from anywhere else. He was never  _eating_ anywhere else.

It wasn’t until a skillet clattered a little too loudly on the stove that Chat realized he had been so absorbed in thought (and croissant) that he’d utterly missed anything the older man had been saying.

He had the decency to look embarrassed. “Sorry, did you say something? I don’t mean to butter you up, but this is really, really good.”

The man laughed, a rich sound, looking at Chat with something like fondness. “Is that so? Well, losing track of the world in your meal is high praise, so I’m proud to take it.” Despite the object of his attention being Chat Noir, his hands were buttering up a couple slices of bread with the grace of skill. “You said you were here to see Marinette?”

He nodded, feeling a little more serious. “There was an incident at … her school today.” Not _our_ school, and he definitely couldn’t add _because of me_ on top of that. His pause was filled with the sound of oil cooking, butter sizzling in a skillet, the opening of the refrigerator, the collection of other ingredients. His arms folded on the table, taking a breath and letting it out. She was home—in the shower, he realized, hearing the nearby rush of falling water—and her parents weren’t panicked; he didn’t want to let himself ratchet back up into the heights of anxiety from earlier, and he didn’t want to drag either of them up with him. Still, he had to give some detail. “Marinette was the target of one of Papillon’s akuma.”

A shadow passed over her father’s face. Concern, worry, uncertainty in the way his eyes crinkled at the corners.

“She’s told us about some of her classmates,” the man said after a moment, glancing at Chat before returning to the stove. “It sounds like there’s been ‘incidents’ with many of them.”

_All of them,_ he realized after a moment of review. _All of them have been._ All of them except Adrien Agreste, who only hummed thoughtfully into a new bite of croissant.

“I don’t know who’s in her class,” he said, his gaze drifting to the polka-dotted shades on the windows. “But a lot of them have been her age.”

He didn’t know how necessary the dodge was, but if he talked to Marinette, and she talked to Alya, saying he _did_ know who was in her class could make it seem like he was one of them. With how adamant Ladybug was about the secrecy of their identities, he _really_ doubted she wanted to find out via some exposé on _The LadyBlog._

Her father didn’t press it at all. “She was a little down when she got home, but I wouldn’t have guessed she spent the day as a super-villain.”

And there it was. Chat shook his head, breathing out. He pressed his elbows on the table so he could sit up a little taller.

“She didn’t.”

As he watched, the line of the older man’s shoulders stiffened, his back getting straighter. He turned from the stove, looking at Chat with a concerned bewilderment. “Didn’t you just say she was?” Confused, more than anything. “So which is it? Was she, or wasn’t she?”

“That’s what’s so unusual,” said Chat, his claws clicking at the table, watching M. Dupain’s face for _any_ sign he might understand this better than himself. “When a person is targeted by an akuma, it goes into an important object, and the person is transformed into a super-villain. It’s only when Ladybug purifies the akuma that they go back to normal. _But._ Marinette—”

He tore off another piece of croissant, pinching it between his fingers in some semblance of gesture.

“—was targeted, but she was never _transformed_ into a super-villain.”

The words settled between them, and quiet followed. For a little while, the only sounds were that of the cooking at the stove, a couple bell-chimes from the bakery below and Mme. Cheng’s voice, and pigeons outside by the windows.

The quiet stayed. The smell from the skillet was starting to drive Chat back into the distraction of hunger, his croissant little but crumbs now. It was to the point he considered licking the tip of one of his gloved fingers and collect the stray fragments and eat them that way, but he was saved from such indignity when M. Dupain laid a plate in front of him. The warmth of toasted bread, the delicacy of cooked ham, the heartiness of melted cheese (and _not Camembert,_ he could cry)—he was ravenous. Two bites, one _Thank you,_ and three bites later, he finally shook himself out of the daze, racking his thoughts to resume where he left off.

“She’s quite remarkable. Ladybug and I, we’ve never seen—”

“—Papa? I think I want to ca— ah?”

She had appeared suddenly from around the corner, but stopped dead in her tracks when she’d caught sight of the scene before her. Chat’s words halted in his mouth when he heard her voice; it was like being dunked in cool water to stave off a fever, or sinking into a warm bath after a frigid day. Her voice was steady. Even. _Normal._ What remaining embers of anxiety had been left inside him, waiting to spark once more, were doused so thoroughly that he nearly sagged off of the chair.

Why had he been this worried? Of course she would be fine. Ladybug had fixed everything. Why wouldn’t Marinette be fine?

As she stood at that threshold, Marinette stared at him. In soft, casual pajamas, with a polka-dotted towel still loosely wrapped around her hair to dry it, she stared at Chat Noir, mouth still caught open for the discarded word. Her eyes were wide, but she looked better than she had before. Her face wasn’t as puffy for crying, and though he could still see a tinge of red to her eyes, it wasn’t as pronounced now. Her mouth hung open, then pursed closed, and her uncertain gaze left Chat for her father, looking between the two of them with building puzzlement.

“Am I… interrupting something?”

As the only one _not_ caught in the staring trap, it was M. Dupain who answered. “Finish what you were saying, Marinette.”

Her gaze flicked back to Chat Noir, but at her father’s request, she turned to face him instead, bringing down the towel, twisting her hands around in the fabric for… nerves? Shame? Her mouth quirked at the corners, but not for a smile.

“I was thinking… instead of the whole big… _thing,_ I’d rather spend it with just you and Mama.” Her foot twisted on the floor, curled toes dragging as she said it. As Chat watched, her father seemed to deflate a little.

“Marinette, if this is about—”

“It’s not just… that.” Another twist of the towel; once more, she glanced toward Chat; he dutifully resumed eating his sandwich, fixing his gaze instead on the ceiling, to give them the illusion of momentary privacy. It seemed to do the trick. “I mean, yes, part of it _is,_ but I still don’t… I don’t want to do all that right now. Is… is that okay?”

There was a sigh from her father, and the gentle clamor of dishes once more being brought into play.

“Your mother and I will make all the calls for you, don’t worry. I’m sorry, honey, I know how much you were looking forward to it.”

“… I know.”

 Chat Noir continued chewing, looking for all the world like he was counting polka dots on the curtain, but _obviously_ he was listening. _Obviously,_ hadn’t a clue what they were talking about in the first place. It wasn’t his business to know, but something about the tone of it made him empathize. While it was more often that it was Adrien’s father that rescheduled or canceled or otherwise hindered what things Adrien looked forward to doing, he heard in her voice the same resignation he often felt: to have something you dearly wanted taken away, and be unable to do anything to take it back. He wasn’t used to hearing it from other people.

“So, um. Papa. Why _is_ Chat Noir eating at our kitchen table?” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, chewing slow; she was keeping her attention on her father. Her arms were loosely crossed, but he could see the etch of tension in the muscle tone of her upper arms. “You know once you feed a stray cat, you’ll never get rid of him.”

“Ask him yourself, he’s your stray,” responded her father, idly waving a spatula through the air. “He’s here to see you.”

He tried not to spit out half-chewed ham or cheese to protest the line – he wasn’t _anybody’s_ stray, thank you _very_ much, nor was he _a_ stray at all – but all he managed to do was sharply inhale and swallow too soon, sputtering into a mild choking fit. Great, was this how he was going to die? On _melted cheese?_ The thought of just how badly Plagg would torment him in the afterlife had Chat pounding his own sternum with a clenched fist until he could breathe again, the bell on his neck jingling with every strike. By the fourth, achieving clear passage, he felt Marinette’s hand come to rest at the back of his shoulder, uncertain.

 “Are you okay?”

It was a grimace, but Chat managed a smile. “I’m _feline_ fine, Mademoiselle.” He hit his chest for a final, demonstrative beat, bell jingling once more. “This would be too _ham-fisted_ a farewell if I departed now!”

“Forget I asked,” she said in return, one hand raised for surrender while the other went back to mopping moisture out of her hair. She went at first to take the seat next to Chat, but the contents of it stopped her. She blinked, moving to unwrap the bundle.

“This is my…” Her mouth twitched to one side, looking at Chat again with a furrowed brow. “You came all this way to bring these back?”

“As much as I need a new blazer, it isn’t my size.” Again, she stared, assessing him in the same way her mother had – a look he was, admittedly, not used to receiving. Marinette seemed like two or three different people, depending on which face he wore. Around Adrien, she seemed a little cat-like: sometimes friendly and content with everyone around her, amenable and caring and always concerned for the happiness and well-being of others, like the sort that populated cafés or romance films, and other times like a long-tailed cat who’d had her tail trod too many times, flighty and nervous (usually around him) or sometimes hissing with anger (usually around Chloé). Around Chat Noir, she seemed to exist somewhere in the middle: clever, well-intentioned, and with her head more firmly attached to her neck. Right now, though, she was despondent, and though he could understand _why,_ it didn’t make him any less inclined to cheer her up.

M. Dupain laid a full plate at the seat across from Chat, pausing to ruffle Marinette’s wet hair.

“I’ll be downstairs with your mother if you need anything,” he said, following it with a kiss to the crown of her head. “Love you, sweetheart.”

She squirmed a little under the attention. “Love you too, Papa,” she offered back, clearly suffering under another ruffle of her hair before her father nodded his head once at Chat, heading out the door towards the boulangerie below. He could hear his descending footsteps, and the distant sound of the lower door opening and closing once more. While his attention was on the older man’s departure, Marinette finally took the seat across from him, fork slowly cutting at the rolled crêpe.

“So,” she started, finally breaking the silence that fell in the absence of her father, “Chat Noir… why _are_ you here?”


	7. Chapter 7

The answer was so obvious, it made the question seem absurd. Chat Noir sat across from Marinette at her kitchen table, he still in full super-heroic uniform while his half-eaten sandwich ever-so-slowly cooled on his plate, her in gray-and-pink pajamas with a fruit-stuffed crêpe slowly being decimated on her plate. He was sitting here, not finishing his sandwich (the best sandwich he’s had in probably six years, but he could wax poetic about it later), still Chat Noir, still Chat Noir after more hours as Chat Noir than he’s probably spent as Chat Noir in the last two months all together, with her shoes and her blazer on the seat beside them, her two elastic hair bands wrapped around his wrist. He was sitting here, after what felt like one of the most stressful days in his life (and not yet over), and what he assumed must be one of the worst days of _hers,_ and Marinette wanted to know why he was here.

He blinked twice for confusion. His brow furrowed. ( _Purr_ -owed? No, that would just be mistaken for burrowed. He could use it for burrowed.) Finally, Chat picked up his sandwich.

“How much do you remember from today,” he asked, mouth hidden but eyes fixed on Marinette’s face. She had spoken to her father and even Chat earlier with some awareness of the prior goings-on, but he knew most people who suffered a villainous transformation tended to forget much of what happened. Maybe it was the same for her?

Marinette’s gaze dropped to her plate, lower lip worrying between her teeth as she thought. Even if she couldn’t give him an instant answer, and even if she still seemed a little dour, it couldn’t quell the sense of relief that pulsed through him, his muscles relaxing and his mood gradually brightening as the seconds and minutes passed. She was herself again. That was what mattered most of all.

Eventually, she shrugged, spearing a couple fruit slices on the end of her fork.

“Bits and pieces, but a lot of it’s blurry. The morning is all fine, I remember _that._ … I was so… clumsy and _stupid._ I can’t believe I thought—” Her face twisted a little, eyebrows pinching up and her whole continence saddened, but whatever _she thought,_ she refused to say. Marinette shook her head rapidly, as if thoughts could be dislodged by force, and resumed speaking on a different track. “But I was so embarrassed, I ran off to the gym showers so… so I could be alone.”

The tines of her fork tapped her plate.

“I was really upset. That’s when it starts getting fuzzy. Alya – my friend, she runs _The LadyBlog—_ ” Chat needed no clarification for who she was, but it was kind that Marinette always tried to give him context to the people in her life when these things came up. When it was the child with the dolls, Marinette had gone out of her way to explain how she knew that girl, and clarified that Alya then was Lady Wi-Fi – who, being a super-villain, Marinette would know he knew.

Distracted by his own thought, he hadn’t noticed that Marinette hadn’t continued. Her face was pallid, bloodless. Her fork slipped from her fingers. It clattered loudly against the plate, and like the strike of a match she came back to life, her hands combing into her hair and yanking sharply, panicking. Her eyes were scanning the plate before her like a phone book, and when she spoke, the words spilled out of her like unexpected bile.

“Oh my _god,_ Alya, she was there and I kicked her in the _ribs_ she’s going to hate me for _sure_ and she’s gonna open a new blog that’s just about how _awful_ I am and nobody’s ever going to be friends with me after this and I’ll get kicked out of school and I’ll never get a job, I’ll be alone, I’m gonna be an old spinster with three cats and I’ll never get married or have kids or—”

It was like watching an old-timey locomotive go careening off a cliff and then explode in freefall. What… what was this? He’d seen Marinette get flustered: she would go into stuttering fits, or her words would come out in gibberish order, but he’d never seen this kind of… over-the-top apocalyptic _meltdown._ It was around the ‘three cats’ mark that Chat leaned forward, laying a gloved hand on her shoulder.

“You’re not going to be alone, or expelled, and your friend isn’t going to hate you.” He gave her shoulder a little shake. “And if anybody starts a Marinette Dupain-Cheng hateblog, I’ll take it down myself.”

As he spoke, he could feel the panic draining out of her, but it wasn’t until the last statement that she looked up again.

“You would?”

“Of course.” She was still clearly shaken from this whole day. Chat was too, truth be told. Guilt was a strange, unfamiliar ache in his chest, like dull teeth gnawing at his lungs and heart and ribs. He winked. “It’s my duty to protect the lady’s honor.”

Okay, maybe he was pushing the savior-knight-in-armor routine a little too hard, but she didn’t look like she was going to spiral into a hyperventilating panic attack anymore. Something he said must have worked. And if it worked, it was fine, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like he didn’t mean it…

When he felt her shoulder lower, he let go, instead resting both his arms on the table. He continued to watch her face, and the slow return of color to her cheeks.

“Whatever happened wasn’t your fault, Marinette. I’m sure Alya will forgive you even if you did kick her in the ribs. She turned into a super-villain before, didn’t she? She knows what it’s like.” He leaned forward a little, the bell on his neck chiming gently for the sway; he kept his eyes locked on hers. “And if she runs _The LadyBlog,_ then she’s seen all kinds of crazy things that people do when they’re corrupted by the akuma.”

She was calmer, but she was biting at her cheek, not quite satisfied with his reassurance. She picked up her fork, starting back in on her crêpe. “But I wasn’t. Was I? A super-villain? I mean since when I woke up you and Ladybug weren’t there and if we fought I would have seen you then and then you wouldn’t be… at my house.” Her rapid sentence hit the brakes partway through, and she looked up with suspicious curiosity. “ _Do_ you go to their houses after?”

“You weren’t a super-villain, and I don’t go to their houses after,” Chat said with a shake of his head, lifting one arm to rest his chin on his hand. She kept focusing on the weirdest things. “But you were affected by the akuma. Don’t blame yourself for whatever happened because of it.”

It seemed to take a little while to sink in, but it finally looked like the guilt was starting to dissipate from her expression. (Now he only had to worry about his own, for putting her in that situation—but that would have to wait for when he could speak to her as Adrien, not Chat Noir.)

“What else can you remember?”

Marinette inhaled deeply, and exhaled slowly, more than once to get her bearings again. She looked at her dessert as if someone had left her notes in the sweet cream but hadn’t told her what the abbreviations meant.

“… I didn’t see the akuma when it arrived. I was… too busy crying.” Her voice grew quieter as she spoke, and a little softer; the late-afternoon sun brought warm, ambient light in through the window, and the pinks and the blues of the room gave the whole environment a comforting warmth that seemed so much at odds with the scene they were in. As she spoke, the more Chat almost wished they could have this conversation somewhere else, some other time, so the sorrow of her voice wouldn’t seem so out of place. It sounded so out of place coming from her at all. “But I felt right away when it hit me. It was like… the moment before catharsis. Like… the second before you actually punch the wall, or when you’re taking in a deep breath so you can just _scream_ into your pillow. The akuma put me right on that precipice. All I wanted to do was let go. And…”

It was hard for her to speak about it. There was a tension along her jaw, and her eyes were hooded as she moved one chunk of strawberry from one section of her plate to another, pushing sugar and cream and pastry around without any thought for eating.

“I heard his voice, in my head. Papillon’s. He gave me a name, but it wasn’t mine. He talked about how he would give me the power to… to do what…” Her frown grew deeper, lower lip pulling back into her mouth and releasing back out again. Her blink was forced. “… what my heart _thought_ it wanted. But it wasn’t… it wasn’t _me._ I couldn’t— there’s no way I could have done it. I had my face in my pillow but couldn’t scream. My fist was wound up, but I couldn’t throw the punch. I couldn’t… I didn’t _want_ to be that person.”

Her eyes forced themselves closed again; when they opened, he could see the moisture of unshed tears clinging to her eyelashes. Without making a sound, he eased off of his chair and moved to the one closer to Marinette, putting her shoes and her blazer on his vacated seat. He slid the chair as close to her as he could without it being on her side of the table. From this closer position, he didn’t have to lean over to reach her; he could simply lay his hand over hers, hold it, trying to give her some comfort.

Papillon took advantage of good, ordinary people. His akuma slid into the momentary cracks within human hearts, the normal tears and strains that every person suffered, and poisoned them from the inside out. He knew this was how it worked, but hearing cheerful, helpful, kind and friendly Marinette talk about it with tears in her eyes, made his heart twist in his chest. Papillon had to be stopped. He had to be.

Marinette’s hand closed over the top of his. Startled, Chat looked down to see that his one hand was clasped between both of hers. He’d been shaking. He forced himself to exhale, slipping his hand out from between hers, and laying both palms flat against the table; Marinette closed one hand over the other, trying to hold them steady.

“He wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. It was name after name after name, but no matter what I did, he wouldn’t shut up. The longer he talked, the more it hurt. I was so far in my own head I don’t remember what I was doing. I know I shoved passed Alya in the lockers, and… kicked her in the ribs… and you.” She swallowed, glancing up. “You rescued me.”

Even with tears in her eyes, the measure of her gaze was heavy, and her smile was wane. Each piece was so radically different, the way they were pieced together seemed somehow too fragile to exist simultaneously.

“Thank you. I knew you would.”

“Of course,” he said, keeping his voice pitched just as soft as hers. It wasn’t the right time for personal pride. “The heroes of Paris never falter. No matter what, Ladybug and I—”

“No,” she said. Her jaw trembled, but her voice was like iron. “I knew it would be _you,_ Chat Noir.”

It hit him like a gunshot, if a bullet could be the moon. His guilt coiled around him tighter, but Chat was speechless. She spoke with such faith, looked at him with such earnest trust—it was the sort of thing that got directed at _them,_ or at _her._ Everyone believed in Ladybug; the people put their trust in Ladybug _and_ Chat Noir. When were declarations like this leveled at him alone?

( _“I’m sure you did a lot more than nothing, chaton. Don’t sell yourself short.”_ )

He could feel his jaw working, lips moving, trying to say _something_ in response – about how he’d (only) ferried the akuma away from her and to Ladybug, who had truly broken Marinette free of Papillon’s attempt at command, but his mouth was dry, his lungs bereft. Honestly, he probably looked like an idiot, gaping like a suffocating fish.

There was a smile pulling at her mouth. Small, and genuine, for gratitude and _clear_ amusement at the spectacle he was making of himself, he could _tell,_ because the moment she noticed that _he_ noticed was the moment she shoveled as much of her crêpe into her mouth as her bulging cheeks would allow, pointedly not looking anywhere near him.

“Ah-ee-ay,” she started, the word only vowels when she first cut the silence (before actually _swallowing_ her food), then cleared her throat, looked to one of the windows, and tried again. “ _Anyway._ Thank you. But everything else is a total blur. I don’t remember anything after you left, but I don’t think I went anywhere. I might have blacked out? Or fell asleep? Or… something! But that’s it. You went, and then it was really fuzzy, and then I woke up a little while ago and came straight home. And took a shower. And then you were here. Talking to my dad? Oh god, what did you tell my dad?! Did you say anything to my _mom?!_ ”

The pressure ebbed from his chest when Marinette’s voice cracked on her panic – it was so much like the way she would stumble through excuses for being late to class or missing her homework that he knew it wasn’t as serious. He kept himself from laughing, but he could feel the smile starting to pull at his face when, after he summarized the more serious part, he told her about his own distress at being invited in so readily and marched to the kitchen to be fed – he hadn’t even told her father that her mother had brought up that food was even part of the equation, and yet there he was, bribed with sandwiches and croissants and was _everything_ made here this good?

“You should try the macarons sometime.”

Her tone was somehow light and heavy at the same time; when she closed her eyes, they stayed closed for a long time; when she tilted her head, he could still see a little bit of shine, where the sun reflected off of the trace remnants of tears in her dark lashes.

“It’s still early, but I think this is the end of the day for me, Chat Noir.” He could see her fatigue in how slowly she opened her eyes, in the curves of her shoulders. She was already dressed for bed, anyway. There was still more he wanted to know, wanted to ask, but she’d told so much already; it was enough to tell Ladybug later, when they discussed this anomaly of an akuma. He bowed his head, starting to rise from his chair, but she held up a hand to still his action. “You can finish your food, silly. Papa would probably start leaving saucers of cream out for you every night if you don’t.”

“Oh?” He grinned, balancing his chin on the back of his hand, elbow leaning hard on the table. “Is the lady encouraging me to take her family’s hospitality, and _milk_ it for all it’s worth?”

She glowered. “I was going to say something nice, but now you’ve _spoiled_ it.”

His grin only grew wider, and he could see the twitch of a smile against her cheek as well. _Hah!_ “I don’t want farewell to be on a _sour_ note. Can we start _fresh?_ ”

The only thing saving Chat Noir from being hauled to the nearest window and thrown out into the street, he knew, was how exhausted Marinette was from this whole ordeal; the calm, murderous way she glanced between him and the far wall was answer enough.

When she finally rose from her seat, the mood swung back once more. “Thank you again,” she said, voice returning to softness. “For everything.”

Still, still, she looked at him with such a sincerity of gratitude, he didn't know how to react. He was paralyzed.

“Paris is lucky to have you.”


	8. Chapter 8

_Paris is lucky to have you._

It had been hours since then. Hours since Chat Noir had stared at Marinette, slack-jawed, as she chuckled, and waved, and bid him goodnight before disappearing up into her attic loft bedroom. Hours since he mechanically finished his sandwich, staring at some fixed point above the stove top, the minutes ticking by until he ran out of food, even after stealing a couple bites of the untouched end of Marinette’s crepe. (Amazing, but not as amazing as—)

Hours since he made his uncertain way downstairs, parting ways with her kind parents (with Mme. Cheng putting together a box of macarons for him to take, and M. Dupain inviting him to drop by anytime for anything, no, _anytime, for anything, we mean it,_ and he wondered if everyone else had parents as warm and as wonderful as these), hours since he flung himself over the streets of Paris and into his own open window. Hours since he had dropped his transformation and dropped onto his bed, box of macarons at his side, and gazed with unseeing eyes toward his ceiling.

It had been hours since he last moved.

He hadn’t stopped thinking about her since.

_“ You’re hopeless, you know that? ”_

Adrien gave Plagg a long, weighing look, as if the stare itself would be heavy enough to drag him down from his mocking hover. It was not; Plagg’s tail swung in the air, like the listless sweep of breeze-touched curtains in spring, trailing smoke.

“I’m not _hopeless,_ ” he said, looking back towards the ceiling. “It’s just… she’s…”

_“ She’s? ”_

“She’s so… extraordinary?” His voice wasn’t airy for awe, breathless, or wistful or anything like that. It was curious; he was curious. He didn’t know how it happened. He still didn’t understand it at all. “I didn’t know you _could_ say no to an akuma, and she just… did?” He sat up, finally, gesturing with his hands, sweeps and clenches without any meaning beyond expelling the energy still thrumming in his muscles. His hands grasped at nothing, as though he could catch answers from the empty air. “Papillon wanted to turn her into a super-villain, and she just said no. Did you know she could do that?”

_“ How would I know? She’s **your** girlfriend. ”_

“Plagg!” The reproach was instantaneous; any time Adrien seemed to have any conversation or experience or _anything_ that involved a girl, Plagg always made it about a _girl,_ as though Adrien couldn’t make friends with or be fascinated by someone who _happened_ to be a girl without it being some romantic thing. He pulled himself into a cross-legged sit, one of his elbows balancing on his knee. “Be serious! Has anyone else done that? Avoided turning into a super-villain? _Can_ anyone else do that?”

_“ Why not? ”_ said the kwami, flippant, already bored with this line of conversation. _“ It’s just a contract. It follows the same rules. ”_

“Same rules? _What_ ‘rules?’ ”

_“ The same rules as the Miraculous, obviously. ”_ Plagg put one of his paws to his mouth to cover an exaggerated a yawn. _“ You couldn’t be Chat Noir if you didn’t want it, she couldn’t be Ladybug if she didn’t want it. Papillon wouldn’t be Papillon if he didn’t want to do what he does. Humans can’t become heroes if they don’t want to, so they can’t become villains if they don’t want to either. You’re supposed to be a smart kid, you didn’t figure that out? ”_

He glowered at Plagg for the insult, but all Plagg did in response was dart off, disappearing into the darkness of his bedroom without another word. He wasn’t going to answer any more questions; with an irritated huff, Adrien flopped backwards onto the bed again, once more staring at the ceiling in silence.

_Just a contract,_ said Plagg, but Adrien kept turning Marinette’s words over and over in his head – how it was to be seized by the evil touch, the way she felt, the way she reacted. How she never said what had happened to her to cause it, how she had never laid blame on anybody else when talking to Chat Noir about the ordeal. How she never mentioned Adrien at all.

How, even now, after all that… she was most concerned about the hurts she inflicted on Alya. How she wanted to make sure Chat Noir knew how she saw his role in her rescue, how he was the one that saved her, that she _believed_ he would be the one to do so. Not Ladybug; not Ladybug _and_ Chat Noir. Just him. How surprised she was that he would check that she was alright. How her subtle gratitude at the small gesture of merely returning her shoes seemed to blossom in her expression, a slow unfurling of surprise he’d never seen from her before. He couldn’t stop thinking about it – this Marinette he’d never seen before.

He slept. He overslept. He spent thirty minutes tearing his room apart looking for his book bag before Plagg reminded him that it was still at school – just like everyone else’s bags, thanks to the ‘attack’ the previous day. Nathalie was less than pleased with his late rush through the mansion to the car, but even with a definite break of the speed limit the short distance to the school and Adrien’s sprint through the building, he skidded into homeroom fifteen minutes after the first bell.

He floundered through trying to make an excuse – his mind went blank when he glanced into the room and saw everyone already there, most of them staring at him for the commotion of his entrance. Most, at least, with some notable exceptions: Alya, who was staring at Marinette with the stiffness of posture and intensity of gaze that meant she’d been staring for far longer than the fifteen-seconds-and-counting that Adrien stood at the classroom threshold, and Marinette, who had her gaze fixed on one of her classroom notebooks, pen held to the page like it were a carving knife. In the end, he thought he said something about getting a dog out of a tree, but by the time he collapsed in his seat, he’d already forgotten the specifics.

The lesson resumed immediately; he didn’t have a chance to turn around to greet either girl, or spit out the apology to Marinette that was burning in his throat like unchecked bile. The longer the lecture went – themes in fiction, masks as identity and appearance as fraudulence – the more impatient Adrien felt.

It wasn’t until Nino stole his notebook, hastily scrawled a note across the top of the open page, and slid it back, that Adrien realized how bad it was.

            _dude, chill out? you’re bouncing so much you’re shaking the whole bench._

With toes curling in his shoes Adrien forced himself to sit still, glancing over to give Nino an apologetic look, before jotting down a response.

            _Sorry. Nerves. I really want to talk to Marinette about yesterday, but_

He let the line drag, tilting his head a little towards the front of the class for indication. It was still going to be a while before their next class switch, and longer still until lunch—but Nino was shaking his head ever so slightly, taking the note back.

_get in line. alya’s already got her booked for lunch._ He nearly handed the note back at that, but when he saw Adrien’s raised eyebrow, Nino wrote a little bit more. Enough to look like he was taking notes, rather than passing them.

_she’s doing an ✨  exclusive interview ✨  for alya’s ladybug blog. marinette spent 20 minutes trying to apologize for hitting alya yesterday, and that’s what they agreed on to make up for it. apparently she had a weird reaction to the akuma thing? alya made it sound like a big deal. you already know about that right? you went after them so you saw what marinette turned into right? she must have been pretty tough for class to get canceled for the whole day._

He frowned the whole time Nino was writing, glancing over his hand to see the new sentences form, and giving one small glance over his shoulder back at the girls behind them. Alya seemed to be actually focused on the lecture, looking up and taking notes properly, but when Adrien turned enough to see Marinette, he could feel guilt drumming in his chest. She looked _miserable._ This wasn’t the mood she’d been in when she’d sent herself to bed, wishing Chat Noir a grateful goodnight; she had concealer enough to hide the worst of the bags under her eyes, but she didn’t look like she’d actually slept at all. When she blinked, she held her eyes closed too long; her pencil was poised on the paper, but it hadn’t moved a millimeter from where it had been when Adrien walked in the room.

Nino passed the note. Adrien forced himself to turn back around.

_No, I lost them both pretty quick. Marinette is a LOT faster than she looks._

It was true, but it wasn’t honest; after all, even if Adrien was left behind when they’d raced to the library, he still knew what happened afterward.

_dude don’t worry. i got hit with an akuma before too you know. even if she remembers what happened, it’ll be really fuzzy. she’s not going to be mad at you. knowing her, she probably wants to apologize to you for the whole thing._

_I’d rather be the one apologizing. ✨ I’m ✨  the one who screwed up._

He glanced back a second time; she still hadn’t moved. Aside from the slow shift of her shoulders and chest for breathing, it could be a Marinette-shaped statue taking her place. This time it seemed she felt the weight of his stare; after a few seconds of him watching her, Marinette made another one of those slow, deliberate blinks, then a second and a third, and forced herself to look up. It was the slowness of waking from a dream, but when she looked at Adrien, it didn’t seem like she _saw_ him at all. There was no light in her eyes. No heat, no warmth, no welcome – no spirit. Even fighting off Papillon’s evil power, she’d been more vibrant than this.

Seconds passed in silence. Marinette blinked at him once, a slow motion that kept her eyes closed for seconds longer as she rolled her shoulders, shaking her head minutely. When her eyes opened, her gaze was turned down toward the center aisle. Her pencil finally started to move, and she would look up to the front of the classroom and then back down, at least putting on the performance of paying attention.

He could not read her. He usually couldn’t, admittedly, but he’d never seen her like this. Nino today and Alya yesterday told him not to worry about it, yet it was all Adrien could do. She wouldn’t hold it against him, she would forgive him, they said, but no matter how many times Adrien snuck glances at her through the remainder of their morning classes, she wouldn’t look at him. She wouldn’t meet his eye.

By the time class broke for lunch, Adrien had turned to look at Marinette no fewer than fifteen times, and she only looked at him that once. As the other students were packing up their bags, rising from their seats, Adrien was whirling in his own, hands gripping at the back of her and Alya’s desk for balance.

“Marinette about yesterday I just wanted to say I’m sorry, it was an accident, I didn’t mean to—”

The words were an explosive rush from his mouth, barely any space between them; Marinette was turned sideways, packing her bag, but paused with her notebook halfway in, halfway out. Before he had finished, she shook her head, forcing the book into place.

“It’s okay, Adrien,” she said to her bag; she did not look at him. Her voice was calm, steady, level; where his anxiety felt like ocean waves crashing against a cliff face, all built-up energy and uncertain forward motion, she _was_ that cliff face: stable, unmoved, and made cold by the attempt. She fastened the bag closed. “I know.”

“It was an _accident,_ ” he repeated; the word was dry in his throat. He could feel Nino and Alya both watching him, watching them, but Marinette _wouldn’t look at him._ She stood, and she forced a smile to her face, and she spoke with a nervous lilt to her voice, but she wasn’t speaking to Adrien.

“You still want to do that interview, right Alya?” Alya’s attention was switching rapidly between Marinette and Adrien, but Marinette wouldn’t so much as glance his way. “We’ll have to go to my house, I left my phone at home—”

“Marinette—”

“—and nobody’s found yours, right?”

“Y—uh, yeah, I have to get a new one,” said Alya, befuddled, but no matter how many times she looked between Marinette and Adrien, he could tell she didn’t understand what was going on either. He couldn’t read Marinette at all, but it seemed like Alya couldn’t either – but, unlike Adrien, Marinette was still talking to Alya. She gave him a _look,_ a momentary twitch of her eyebrow and a widening of her eyes, the slightest of tilts to her head. _I don’t know either,_ Alya seemed to say. “But your camera’s decent enough, I can work with that.”

Marinette turned to leave her seat; Adrien felt himself stand up, saw his arm stretch out to grab her, but she pivoted out of reach; she hurried down the minimal steps, Alya following close behind; Adrien felt the hard bench slam against his tailbone, pain shooting up his spine, before he realized he’d dropped back to sitting; Nino had a hand on his shoulder, and behind Marinette’s back Alya was mouthing a reassurance, pointing between herself, Marinette, and Adrien.

_I have no idea, but I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry!_

But the other students already gone, filed out, the door closed, worry was all he had.

Adrien messed up, and he had no idea how he was going to fix it.


	9. Chapter 9

“You’re going to dig a trench to New Zealand if you keep pacing like that.”

Lunch was just over halfway over. Rather than go home, Adrien had spent the entirety of it in front of the school, walking from one end of the bottom steps to the other. Pacing, in Nino’s opinion. His friend, who was not an anxious mess that had irrevocably ruined one of his few-and-far-between friendships in the span of one minute the previous morning, was sitting on one of the raised stone handrails, working his way through a mug of soup he’d abandoned Adrien to purchase about twenty minutes before. The one he’d gotten _for_ Adrien sat beside him, untouched.

While Nino watched, Adrien turned on his heel once more, walking back again; his attention was on his phone screen, where he’d been compulsively refreshing Alya’s blog for the past fifteen minutes for some sign of update. He knew he was being impatient, and he knew the likelihood of Marinette somehow tacking in _how badly_ Adrien had screwed up _and_ explaining what _exactly_ he needed to do to make amends in the middle of a post-villain interview was extremely low, but Adrien couldn’t think of what else to do.

“Seriously Adrien, you need to _chill out._ ” The heel of Nino’s shoe bounced against the stone, and he leaned forward a little more, elbows nearly falling off his knees. “You’re kind of freaking me out here.”

“She didn’t even look at me, Nino!” His grip on his phone was stranglehold-tight; if it weren’t, the way he flung his arm for emphasis would have sent it sailing into one of the second-story windows. “Nobody accepts an apology from someone they can’t look at.”

_“I_ know, but _you_ need to dial it down. Deep breaths,” he said, still keeping his attention on Adrien over the rim of his mug. “You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack, and I’m not giving you CPR.”

It was a joke to cut the tension. Adrien forced his feet to stay still, and forced himself to take a slow, deep breath, and to release it in a slower wind. He was getting really worked up; his heart was drumming too fast and too hard in his chest. He needed to calm down.

“I know, I’m sorry. It’s just…” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, glancing at his phone screen once more. No new updates. Adrien took another breath, turning instead to face Nino with the full force of his uncertainty. “I haven’t really had _friends_ before this year. I never went to public school, I never was around many people my age… all of this is… _new._ ”

No new updates.

“I’ve never _messed up_ like this.”

In a word, Adrien was floundering. Modeling, posing, doing what he was told – that came easy, naturally; it was a skill honed from an early age, he didn’t have to think about it at all. His other skills were all trained. Music, weapon combat, bare-handed combat, foreign languages, math, science, even history and literature, it was all rote. Practice and repetition, practice and repetition: he could make it _look_ easy because he was trained to _make_ things look easy. But friendship? Relationships? _Not_ losing one of the few _good_ friends he managed to make on his own?

_Don’t worry,_ they said, but they wouldn’t tell him what to do instead. With another heavy exhale, Adrien dropped to sitting on the lowermost step, legs stretched out into the sidewalk, and glanced once more at the phone screen. No new updates.

He heard Nino slide off his perch, his shoes hit the ground, and felt the slight wind when the other boy dropped down beside him. The second mug of soup was offered to him again; Adrien wasn’t hungry, his stomach twisting over itself too tightly for nerves, but he took it anyway. The warmth of it against his palms was small comfort.

“I haven’t known her for that long, but Marinette’s not the type of person to hold a grudge, you know?” The weight of Nino’s hand on his shoulder was not as much of a comfort as Adrien would like, but the pressure _did_ help. Like an anchor, sinking deep to prevent him from blowing too far off course. He tried to smile for gratitude, because he _was_ grateful for Nino’s support, but even he could tell it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I know.”

“She forgave you for the whole gum thing, remember? And she didn’t even know you back then. So why would she think you did something like this on purpose?”

“I know, I _know._ I mean, I know it… up here.” Adrien tapped his temple with his free hand, letting his attempt at a smile fall back into its more natural frown of concern. “But I don’t know her that well either. I don’t know _anyone_ that well. How am I supposed to know what she will or _won’t_ forgive?”

“Know what who won’t forgive?”

The question didn’t come from Nino; surprised at a new voice chiming in, Adrien looked up, startled, but it was just a couple of their classmates coming back to campus – Kim and Max. Kim was the one who’d spoken, giving Adrien a confused look, while Max merely folded his arms, nodding through his own thoughts.

“Considering the circumstances, the most likely person he means is Marinette.”

“Oh, right—dude, that was _totally_ messed up yesterday,” said Kim, his hands balling into loose fists and his whole body dropping into a casual boxer’s stance, as though he were channeling Marinette’s delayed anger. “It’s no wonder she went all super-villain-y after that.”

Adrien let his gaze drop, trying to swallow past the tension in his throat. “Thanks for the reminder,” he muttered, what little comfort Nino had instilled dissipating rapidly.

“Hey, wait,” said Nino, dropping his hand from Adrien’s shoulder to sit up more, opening up to include the other two in the conversation. “You guys were in her class last year, right?”

The _That’s right_ came from Max, while Kim chimed in with _This is our third year in a row,_ and not for the first time Adrien felt a small pang of resentment. This was still only his first year in public school in the first place. Even Nino, the person Adrien could call his best friend, was someone he’d only known for a few months.

Still, Nino pressed on. “Then you’ll know better than us – do you guys think Marinette’s going to hate Adrien’s guts for the rest of the year over that cake-tastrophe?”

No new updates—but Adrien barely had time to register the screen before he was distracted by the sound of Max’s laughter cutting in.

“Marinette? She doesn’t hate anybody. There’s no way.”

“There, you see?” Nino was giving Adrien another reassuring smile. “What did I tell you?”

“There is _one_ way,” said Kim, straightening up and letting his own arms cross for thought. “If she knows Chloé put you up to it.”

“ _What?_ ” He was already lost. What did Chloé have anything to do with—

“Oh, yes, that would do it,” added Max, his jovial dismissal immediately transformed into solemn agreement. “Chloé’s involvement increases the likelihood of Marinette holding a grudge by six thousand percent.”

“What does _Chloé—_ ”

“Weren’t you talking to her right before Marinette came in?” That was Nino, suddenly giving Adrien a wide-eyed look that bordered on suspicion. “Dude, seriously, did she put you up to that or—”

“No! She didn’t put me up to anything! What happened with Marinette was an _accident—_ ”

“An accident right after you talked to Chloé ‘has had it out for Marinette since _day one’_ Bourgeois,” Nino, again, with the helpful hand gestures for air quotes, “no _wonder_ she’s pissed off.”

“Oh, it’s much longer than that,” Max, adjusting his glasses, turning his head to look up at Kim, who was already nodding along.

“They’ve been rivals as long as I’ve been in their class.”

Adrien thought he was floundering before, but now it felt like they had him by the crown of his head and were forcing him underwater. He barely felt like he could take a breath before he was being shoved back under – every line was cut off, replaced with a noose from some narrative he didn’t know. “She doesn’t have it out for Marinette—”

“Are you _blind?_ ”

“I know she’s a little abrasive—”

“A _little?!_ I know you like her but you can’t be ser—”

“She is ten times more aggressive to Marinette than anyone else—”

“She’s gotten worse about it this year—”

“You guys she’s _really not_ that—”

“No wonder she’s so mad about—”

**_Vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm!_ **

All four boys silenced at once at the aggressive sound. The vibration traveled up Adrien’s arm with such force the phone nearly dropped from his hand. The screen was lit up; it vibrated a second time with that loud noise. Nobody said a word.

It was from Marinette.

Adrien rose to his feet in an instant, walking away from all three of them with anger tight between his shoulders, hand shaking as he fumbled to hit answer. Yes, Chloé was rude, and blunt, and extremely selfish sometimes, and never as nice as Adrien wanted her to be, but there was a wide gulf between ‘selfish’ and ‘needlessly cruel.’ While Adrien was more willing to argue with her these days when she was in the wrong, she was still his friend; he wasn’t going to abandon her this callously.

He took a steadying breath, trying to dispel some of his tension, before he finally brought the phone to his ear.

“Marinette? Listen, I—”

“Don’t waste your breath,” cut him off instantly; the lance of hurt through him was swift, but she kept going. “She said it’s not about the cake.”

“Wait, _Alya?_ ”

“Yes, Alya,” said Alya, faster than normal. “I had to borrow her phone because I lost mine. We just finished the interview, but more importantly: it’s not about the cake.”

Adrien’s free hand scrubbed through his hair; he shot a glance back towards Nino and the others, who were all watching him with interest. He started pacing.

“You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure?”

“Positive. If you want the direct quote, she said ‘it’s not about the stupid cake.’ I’m trying to get a concrete answer, but everything beyond that has been really cryptic.”

“What do you mean, cryptic?” He could barely hear her over the rushing of blood in his ears – the heavy pounding of his anxious heart.

“Mostly she’s been waving me off, but I caught something about ‘it’ being pointless, whatever ‘it’ is, and some of her usual self-defeatism. The interview was pretty weird too… you haven’t watched it yet right?”

“I—no, I was refreshing, but it hadn’t updated yet.” It might have posted while he and the others were arguing, but Adrien doubted he would have gotten through the whole thing before Alya called anyway.

“You need to watch it,” she said, and it felt like fear was calcifying as a second ribcage, jabbing into his organs. “It doesn’t add up. You’ve kept up with the blog, so I know you’ll see it.”

“I’ll cram it in before class starts.” It sounded more like a promise than a statement; Adrien glanced back towards the steps, where Nino, Kim, and Max had now huddled into a quiet conversation without him, voices at a whisper. He knew they were talking about him, but he didn’t know precisely what they were saying, and the concept was maddening. If Nino didn’t tell him later—

“Good. I’m going to let you go – Marinette doesn’t know I’m calling you, so don’t call me back, ‘kay? It sounds like her dad wants to keep her home for the afternoon, so you and I’ll talk strategy after class, got it?”

“Got it.” His heart had settled somewhere at the back of his throat, and he couldn’t tell if he felt more miserable for having spoken to Alya or more relieved. It was bad news, or at least uncertain news, but Alya was still in his corner. He was grateful for that much.

“Good. Talk to you soon—!”

The call disconnected. Adrien stared down at the screen, waiting or expecting for it to begin ringing again, but the screen only dimmed, and went black.


	10. Chapter 10

It didn’t add up.

Adrien had left the other guys to their conversation at lunch and watched _The LadyBlog Exclusive_ ; the video had wrapped up five minutes before the bell, but Adrien still failed to get to class on time. He’d slid into his usual place beside Nino, but his eyes were on Alya at the desk behind them. Her eyes widened behind her glasses, an eyebrow raised in silent question: _did you see it?_

His mouth had pulled into a line as he nodded once, and his eyes had narrowed slightly: _Yeah. It doesn’t make any sense._ In more ways than Alya knew. In several more ways than Adrien alone should have known. Figuring out how to get Alya to reveal what she found out without giving himself away was going to be tricky, Adrien knew, but the gulf left by Marinette’s interview would give him plenty of room to work with.

After all, she’d lied from start to finish.

The rest of the academic day passed by slowly; Adrien barely had headspace enough for any of the equations written up, too busy turning over Marinette’s words from the interview and his short conversation with Plagg after it over in his head. It was too confusing. Nothing was adding up. He couldn’t figure it out at all.

When the final bell rang, Adrien’s bag was already packed and in his hand; he swung out of his seat with only a backwards glance at Alya, who was in just as much of a hurry as he was. Nino, meanwhile, was packing up in his usual languid fashion. His forced, nervous laugh restrained Adrien from sprinting outright.

“Hey, where’s the fire? I thought you said—”

Before Adrien could come up with a response – something to let Nino down easy, since they usually tried to hang out when Adrien wasn’t whisked away from campus immediately for a photoshoot or piano lessons across town – Alya was already there to his rescue, looping one of his arms with hers and tossing Nino a wave with her free hand.

“Sorry Nino, Adrien is mine this time. Later!”

She was already pulling him towards the door, so Adrien only had to give a helpless shrug and a wave for punctuation before they were out of the room. They didn’t stop there, though, in that bustling hallway as students poured out of every classroom; Alya unhooked their arms to instead grab him by the wrist, leading him through a familiar wind of turns. From her serious expression and her silence the moment they started moving, Adrien could tell it wasn’t anything she wanted overheard; he couldn’t say he wanted to go broadcasting this conversation from the rooftops, either.

In the end, Adrien found himself pulled into the girl’s restroom – once Alya had scoped it as empty. It was the same one from yesterday, on the upper floor of the library. The tall windows were shut. Alya locked the door behind them.

“So, she was definitely lying, right?” Adrien asked, watching as Alya walked to the window, shoving at the pane of glass; it was latched shut, and so remained closed. She had her back to Adrien, so he could only see the way her hands fell to rest on her hips, her head tilting to look the window over in thoughtful silence. His question hung in the air. Seconds passed.

“She was _definitely_ lying.” Alya’s foot tapped on the tile floor as she continued her examination of the window. Adrien let his bookbag slip to the ground, crossing to her side.

“If you knew that… why’d you publish it?” Though less confusing than Marinette’s behavior, it struck Adrien as odd. He leaned his shoulder against the window, his arms crossing loosely. “ _The LadyBlog_ has always prided itself on publishing the _truth.”_

Alya was biting her lip against his accusation, attention still skimming over the window. “I know. But that’s the thing. _You_ know she was lying, and _I_ know she was lying… but _she_ doesn’t know that _we_ know she’s lying. And nobody else knows what happened. So—”

“You don’t want Marinette to know that we know.”

_“Exactly._ If I didn’t publish, she’d get suspicious! She’s clamming up tight enough as it is, but I’m going to get to the bottom of this. Starting with _this! ”_

Alya banged her arm on the closed window, one-three-five-six times in rapid succession, _wham!_ after _wham!_ against the glass. It rattled in its frame, but did not budge; Adrien jolted from his temporary recline, eyes wide.

“Alya, what are you _doing?”_ he hissed, glancing between her and the window. “Are you trying to break it?” Alya gave it another hard smack, accomplishing nothing, before she turned to stare towards the door.

“That doesn’t make sense either…” she huffed, letting her arms drop, then rise again in pantomime of surrender, before she turned to face Adrien fully once more. “Okay, let’s take it from the top. Start of class yesterday. What happened?”

Adrien glanced between Alya and the window, his brow still cocked for the unanswered question, but with small delay he said, “Marinette tripped over her feet on the way in. I tried to catch her, caught her box instead, and… dropped her cake on her. She left, then you and I chased after her. I caught up to you two in the locker room, Marinette ran out a few minutes later, you chased after her, I chased after you, and… lost you.” He glanced at the window again. “The alarm went off before I found you. I tried looking, but I was forced outside with everyone else. I thought you two would have come out too, but I didn’t see you…”

He hated lying, but the truth involved Chat Noir, and not even Marinette’s weird interview was enough to make him give up his secret identity. He liked Alya – they weren’t the closest of friends, but they’d been assigned more than a couple class projects together. She was hard-working, and energetic, and usually pulled her weight, but she was easily distracted. Sometimes that meant Adrien did more of the heavy lifting as far as research went, but the few times they’d been working together when a super-villain appeared, Adrien never had to make excuses to get away from Alya; she always ditched him at the barest whisper of trouble, which made getting away to _stop_ said trouble a great deal easier than when he was teamed up with Nino, or Chloé, or really anybody else. It didn’t mean he liked her enough to reveal his identity – not even Ladybug, and not even his father knew who he was.

But from the corner of his eye, Adrien saw her only nod in response. All of her suspicions were still cast towards Marinette, so his cover was safe for now.

“Right. I pushed her a little to get her moving, and that’s why she lost her balance… so between me, you, and Chloé laughing at her, she was a prime target for Papillon’s akuma.”

“Which we saw chasing her out of the lockers,” added Adrien, nodding along. He’d defended Chloé to Max and the guys earlier, for saying she had something to do with _Adrien_ wrecking Marinette’s cake (when she absolutely hadn’t, obviously), there was no denying that it was her laughter that was the final straw that broke Marinette’s resolve.

“Right. So we come to lie number one! When I interviewed her, she said what did it was—”

“Her own clumsiness,” finished Adrien, refolding his arms and once more leaning back against the wall. In the video, Marinette had glossed over everyone’s involvement, faulting herself for always being clumsy, that things like that happened to her all the time – that she imagined the laughter of her classmates. The more she’d gone on that way, the more she forced herself to smile and to joke at her own expense, and the more Adrien had frowned when he watched. His frown was back. “She made it sound like she was the only one who messed up.”

Alya nodded, resuming her pacing. “So that brings us to the locker room, and lie number two. Marinette claims that she _saw_ the akuma, got freaked out, and ran for the hills.”

He nodded, listening along. Interview-Marinette had described it simply: she saw the akuma coming toward her, she mistook its coloration for some sort of dangerous, exotic insect, and so fled out of fear of physical harm. What Marinette had told _Chat Noir,_ however, was that she hadn’t seen the akuma at all; she was too busy crying. _I felt right away when it hit me._ She’d told Chat that the akuma had already tried to poison her – that Papillon’s voice was already trying to sway her heart – before Adrien or Alya had realized anything was wrong.

“But when I went _back_ to the lockers,” continued Alya, who knew nothing about the ‘interview’ Marinette had given him the night before, “I found some parts of cake that had been stomped on. There were little sugar-candies in the frosting that were all broken up. Where—!” she exclaimed, eyes wide and finger pointing at Adrien like he were the one on trial here, “—the akuma was hiding!”

He gave her a look of surprise that he didn’t feel. “You’re saying the akuma possessed her before she ran out?”

It was this face—her eyes bright and her smile pulling into her cheeks—that made Adrien hope and pray that Alya would never turn her investigative lens on _him._

“I’m _saying,_ she _broke the possession_ before she _was_ possessed. _And._ She did it at least _six times._ ”

The cake was one; the two hair ties were two and three; each shoe was four and five; the pair of scissors, he realized with some thought, must have been six. Seven was her blazer, but Adrien had seen the akuma go into her clothing with his own eyes; Alya had departed just before that. The way she acted then, if Chat Noir hadn’t arrived, Marinette would have been in a fit enough state to destroy her blazer, too—she could have overcome the seventh time on her own.

Would the akuma have ever given up? Would Marinette? What would have happened if she’d run out of things to destroy? It was a question that left him breathless, a little scared—but Alya, clearly misinterpreting his shock for a different sort, pressed on.

“Which brings us to lie numbers three, four, and five: Marinette did not turn into a super-villain.” She counted them off on her fingers. “Marinette did not wreak havoc on an abandoned school by shooting baking spices at the walls. Marinette did not _forget_ anything.”

Adrien nodded; he could feel his tension pulling at his expression, but it was nothing compared to the slow churning in his gut, or the tight clench of his arms. Marinette told _Alya_ – and the world – that she could barely remember anything between running out of the locker room and waking up to the sight of _Ladybug_ and _Chat Noir._ Neither had been there when the akuma was purified. Marinette told _Chat Noir_ that her memories were blurry: that she remembered hitting Alya, that she remembered his arrival, that she must have blacked out after he left.

He let himself exhale slowly. Usually when things were over, they were _over,_ done with; he couldn’t think of a single incident with an akuma that he still had to dissect the following day. (If she’d just turned into a super-villain, he thought, everything would be fine now. The petty thought was chased and devoured by guilt, and he squashed them both down under his metaphorical heel.)

“So,” said Adrien, uncrossing his arms, trying to put together the conclusion Alya wanted him to reach. “Marinette never turned into a super-villain, but is claiming she did… and she’s hiding behind amnesia to avoid the details?”

She nodded.

“Why?”

At that, Alya threw her arms into the air, an aggravated noise erupting from her with a high pitch and a long drawl.

“I don’t _knoooooow!_ I don’t know! I can’t figure out what in the world she’s thinking! Her story’s so flimsy, she has to know I’d see through it! She knows how akuma victims act because she’s watched my videos. _‘It’s like trying to remember a bad dream from three months ago—’_ ” Alya had her hands up for quotation marks, but as soon as she repeated Marinette’s words, Adrien realized— “She quoted _me!_ That’s my description! She doesn’t know that I know she’s lying, but she _has_ to know I’d notice _that!_ I don’t know what she’s trying to pull, and I _still_ can’t figure out how she _opened this damn window!_ ”

What.

“What?”

“This!” She cried, gesturing with both arms to the tall, closed window behind him, frustration painted across her face. “Yesterday! I locked Marinette in here when I went to go get help, but when I came back, she was gone! And _this_ was open! And I can’t figure out how she got out this stupid window without anybody seeing her when I can’t even get it _open._ ”

Wait. _Wait._ Adrien pushed away from the wall, brow furrowing anew. “What? How do you know she went out the window?”

“I locked her in here,” she repeated, waving her hand back at the door. “I barricaded it from the outside. I was only gone for a few minutes! When I got back, the door was still blocked, but Marinette was gone. If she’d turned into a villain, she would have just broken the window, or the wall, but it was just—open!”

“You’re sure it was only a few minutes?”

“Yeah! Like, ten, at most? The fire alarm was still going off!” She looked a little confused by the detail of his focus, but she was still wound up for frustration; Adrien could only focus on the slow, crawling sense of coldness that rolled down his spine at her words.

Marinette had lied to Chat Noir, too.

_Why?_

The pieces that confused Alya were quickly obvious to Adrien:

» The door had been unbarred by Chat Noir, who had merely moved Alya’s chair and subsequently walked into the bathroom.  
» The window had been opened by Chat Noir, whose extendable staff could open the high latches that no ordinary person could reach without a ladder or a pole of some kind.  
» After his departure, Marinette walked out the then-unbarred door before Alya got back.  
» Once outside, Marinette saw the chair, realized it’d been used to block the door earlier, and re-blocked it.  
» Marinette left without being seen by Alya, likely the only person left in the school, and somehow snuck off of campus without being seen by students, faculty, or the skeleton crew police force that had been guarding the grounds when Chat Noir returned hours later.

And maybe the whole thing wouldn’t be so strange – wouldn’t make Adrien now feel so sick with some medley of confusion and disappointment and anxious dread that deserved its own name as an emotion, but that he couldn’t come up with – if it made _any sense._ Because Adrien knew Marinette was smart, knew she was clever – she was quick-witted and impulsive and she was brilliant in a pinch. She was imaginative, she was a creator, she was a _solver._ She put ideas to paper and then brought them to life in her fashions; she heard other people’s problems, which seemed insurmountable, and found ways to fix them in unexpected ways. When it was her and Chat Noir, blocked in a cube prison, it was Marinette that found the way out. So in a way, he could see it, that Marinette leaving the bathroom would see that chair thrown over like that and realize it’d been used to block the door… but that didn’t justify blocking it a second time.

Everything kept coming back to that single question: **_why?_**

Adrien pinched the bridge of his nose, head pounding. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“ _Exactly!_ ”

While his thoughts had retreated inward, trying to put together this puzzle with blank pieces, Alya kept going, and Adrien realized distantly that most of the reason he was here was because Alya needed somebody to be her soundboard – since she obviously couldn’t talk to Marinette.

“I searched the grounds, and I went through the whole school three times before they kicked me out, but she wasn’t here! That’s when I saw that stuff in the showers, and she definitely didn’t go back there, and she didn’t go back to the classroom because her purse and her bookbag were still there, and she didn’t go _home,_ I had to borrow _Juleka’s_ phone to call them and they said she wasn’t there until way later.

“And today!” she continued, speech quicker for her racing thoughts, “Marinette is cagey about everything, refuses to let anyone get blamed for what happened, fakes amnesia to avoid talking about it, gives everybody the cold shoulder, has her _dad_ running interference—this is fishy. _Suspicious._ ”

Her pacing was worse than Adrien’s, but at this moment she stopped, taking a breath. She looked at him with fierce resolve. “She’s hiding something. And I’m going to figure out what.”

Alya was _terrifying._

“And _you’re_ going to help me.”

“Me?” Did he say too much? Could she tell he knew more than he was letting on? _Did she know?_ “Uh, why me?”

Alya poked his nose, mimicking the way Ladybug would chastise Chat Noir. His eyes went a little cross, heart beating heavy in his chest. _Does she know?_

“Because _your_ butterfingers led to me busting my phone, so until I get it replaced, _you_ get to be my new cameraman.”

Adrien blinked six times in succession; Alya grinned, a little forced, and propped her hands in fists against her hips. She looked exceedingly proud of herself. He had the feeling he was going to regret everything even more than he already did.

“If you want a cameraman… wouldn’t Nino be a better choice for the job?” he asked, though he knew protesting was already futile by the gleam in her eyes. “He’s the budding _auteur._ I’m usually in _front_ of the camera, not behind it.”

“Nino would quit on me in five minutes,” she said, heaving a breath and crossing her arms. Some of her high spirit seemed to dissipate from her with the expelling of air; she seemed softened by it. Her lips twitched “Besides that… you want to figure this out about as much as I do. When you tried apologizing earlier…”

She was right; the reminder felt like iron shackles clamping suddenly on his wrists, and his shoulders sagged for the weight. “… She wouldn’t even look at me.”

“It’s not like her.” It wasn’t a dismissal of Adrien’s worry, the way Nino and the others had acted earlier at lunch, or like even Alya had yesterday morning. “None of this adds up.”

And knowing more only seemed to make the equation even more imbalanced. His brief conversation with Plagg earlier returned to mind, his words echoing in Adrien’s head. He’d _acted_ uninterested at first, when Adrien was watching the interview, but in the end the kwami had given him some surprising insight.

Then again, Plagg loved secrets.

“We know she _is_ lying,” he repeated, even as it pained him to say that about Marinette. “So the two things we need to know are… what _is_ the truth… and what _about_ the truth does she want to hide?”

Neither of them knew those answers yet. Marinette was going to need a follow-up interview – with Chat Noir.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> * * *

“Marinette, you have company.”

‘Company’ stood in the Dupain-Cheng sitting room with his arms crossed behind his back, rocking heel-to-toe and back again as he waited, watching Marinette’s mother try to summon her daughter from her loft bedroom. The door was closed.

Adrien had _wanted_ to come over as soon as he finished talking to Alya, but _free time_ was a scarce commodity. He couldn’t skip out on his mid-afternoon Chinese lessons without his father finding out, and even after all these months his school enrollment was still bargain in a tenuous armistice. He could not fail to meet any of his father’s expectations; even if he wanted to figure out the matter with Marinette as soon as he could, if he lost the privilege of going to school entirely, he might never see her again _anyway._ He had to strategize.

Then after lessons, it was straight home for the shortest of reprieves before the traditionally quiet dinner with his father, which was mostly the same as ever: a general summary of their respective days, with Adrien embellishing the amount of study covered in class and his father omitting the details of his business dealings over a magazine-perfect (and utterly forgettable) meal. His father’s only comment on Adrien’s sour mood was the harsh reminder to not scowl or make such unpleasant faces; he would give himself early wrinkles that way.

As always, the meal lasted until mid-evening, and in normal circumstances Adrien would have been left with a scant few hours to complete his various class readings and assignments before his official bedtime. But despite the late hour, the world still burned bright, the white-hot sun still fixed into the brilliant blue of the summer sky, and Adrien couldn’t bear the anxious strain in his chest any longer. With ease, he’d transformed, snuck out, and crossed the short distance to Marinette’s house, and not ten minutes had passed from leaving his father’s table to arriving in the Dupain-Cheng residence.

The longer he waited, without the distraction of hunger or conversation to assuage his nerves, the more Chat Noir felt like leaving. Yes, he wanted to know more: he wanted to know what really happened to Marinette, why she lied, why she still felt so upset, wanted to know how he could fix things. At the same time, he still had no idea what he was going to say to her. With how she’d looked and reacted in class, he had no idea how she was going to take Chat Noir’s presence at all. The fear of disappointment, the fear of failure — it was a familiar burn in his throat, but the stakes were so much higher now.

Maybe he should go. Maybe she needed more time. Maybe he needed more time to plan this out. Maybe it wasn’t any of his business why she lied to Alya and everyone else. Maybe Adrien deserved her cold shoulder and the loss of her friendship, as if he’d ever deserved otherwise in the first place. Maybe there was no secret; maybe she avoided being turned into a super-villain simply because she was so wonderful at everything already.

Uncrossing and recrossing his arms, Chat Noir glanced between the closed loft door and Mme. Cheng, channeling nerves into a wry smile.

“It’s alright if she doesn’t want to see me. I can go—”

“Marinette!” called her mother, much louder this time, ignoring his protests as she ascended the stairway, pounding on the closed loft door, “Company!”

Above them he heard the dull groan of wood against wood, and the loft door popped open. Out first was the flood of music, the wailing guitars and soul-searing vocals of Jagged Stone ( _Firefang_ , off the new album), followed by the frowning face of M. Dupain. He spoke quietly; Chat Noir almost couldn’t hear him under the music.

“Sabine, I thought we agreed to send any more of Marinette’s friends home if they came over today.”

“I have, Tom,” said Mme. Cheng, a detail that caught Chat’s curiosity, “but I thought we might make an exception for _this_ one.”

Dupain looked away from his wife to see Chat Noir standing near the couch. Instinctively, Chat waved with a short “Hello” tacked on.

Marinette’s father looked at him in silence, blinking, and echoed his “Hello.” He looked back at Marinette’s mother. Jagged Stone shattered a guitar into his amp. The man sighed, muttering a quiet “I’ll let her know” as his wife placed a consoling palm against the curve of his cheek. His hand cupped briefly over hers before he retreated back into the sanctum of the loft. The door closed; the music cut off.

Mme. Cheng turned from the loft door to smile at Chat Noir, mouth closed but her cheeks pushing up against her eyes — a sincere smile, if not as radiant and unfettered as Marinette’s could be.

“Tom will be out in a moment,” she said, beginning to descend the stairs. “Marinette’s in the middle of another one of her projects, so watch your step up there.”

“Projects?”

But she wasn’t given a chance to answer: the loft door opened once again, the introductory drum solo to _The Dragon of Mount Sorrow_ carrying M. Dupain down the stairs. He brushed his hands against his thighs, dust glittering in the light, and he turned to Chat Noir with a serious expression. Chat found himself standing up straighter, locking his knees, squaring his shoulders and folding his hands once more behind his back. Instinctively, he tried to look more sure of himself and his place than he really felt.

“She said you can go up. But—” He held a hand up, a _stop_ gesture, anticipating a Chat Noir that would rush forward in an instant. With a lurch, Chat leaned back, straightening himself a second time. “—She may not act like it, but Marinette’s a very sensitive girl. Don’t push her too hard.”

Chat swallowed, trying to loosen the tightness in his throat, and nodded once. It seemed to be enough, for M. Dupain lowered his hand and stepped aside, opening the path to the stairway. Chat spared a glance to Mme. Cheng as well. Her encouraging nod seemed to melt the leaden weights around his ankles and press momentum between his shoulder blades to get him moving. It was a strange set of warnings, he thought, taking the steps one by one. Sensitive Marinette… sensitive to the people around her, he thought, but she’d always seemed to shrug the worst of everything else off her shoulders in a self-assurance that Adrien envied.

Then again… how well did he know Marinette, _really?_ There was always a surprise with her. Why not this, too?

_The Dragon of Mount Sorrow_ grew louder as he climbed, and when Chat finally emerged into the loft bedroom, he was once again surprised by what he saw.

He’d been up here before, to practice for the Ultimate Mecha Strike III tournament a few months ago. He remembered the cozy ambience the room had, the way everything had led into one another, how every part of the room seemed useful, functional, how it exuded so much of Marinette’s personality.

It was all in disarray.

The furniture had been pulled away from the walls — the chaise, the vanity, both parts of her L-shaped desk, every little table and dresser — and was crowded together by the trap door. The chaise was out at an angle, having been settled above the door previously. It alone sat exposed, while the rest were covered in a plastic sheet, a thick and heavy thing, translucent in a milky, artless sort of way. Near one of the walls stood a grand ladder, made from a heavy-duty plastic whose original color had long since faded in the Parisian summer sun. Marinette hung from the ladder — she lay on it, upside-down, with her back against the steps and her legs folded in between them, pink shoes poking out from between the rungs of the other side.

Chat closed the door behind him. As he moved toward her perch, the breeze through the open window tousled his hair. Messy corkboards and a couple rolled posters were piled near a covered dress form; the pink walls were bare of anything save the ribbons of slick black paint slinging this way and that. A mural in progress. The weights of the lines weren’t even, nor was the thickness of color; the pink shown through in more places than not. It gave an illusion of watercolors, he thought, or maybe calligraphy. Those strange branching lines seemed more abstract than anything else, but it was hard to judge the meaning of an in-progress piece.

Her stereo system was sitting on the uncovered chaise, next to a folded parasol; Chat carefully turned down the volume. She continued working.

Adrien wasn’t an artist of any kind, but even in this surreal, unfinished state, he could see the appeal. With just one sweep of her arm, Marinette made another permanent mark to the wall. Image, mood, meaning; any could emerge in a single gesture.

“Come here a second,” called Marinette. Her arms lifted, grabbing at the top of the ladder, hauling her body up into a sitting position. There were smears of black paint on her face and on the smock she wore, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She tapped the handle of the heavy brush against the top step.

Oh. She was talking to him.

Chat shook himself out from his reverie, making his way towards her perch. As he approached, Marinette rolled herself backwards, hanging once more upside down on the ladder, calling out to him while her attention went back to the wall. “Can you move this about… four steps that way?” Her left arm waved towards a blank portion of the wall. He hesitated, but a glance down clarified his task: the two legs of the ladder on Marinette’s side had wheels clamped to their feet, held stationary by the stability of all four against the ground. If Chat were to lift the back two legs just so, he could move the whole contraption without Marinette needing to come down, or the ladder needing to be closed. Judging by how much of the wide wall Marinette had already covered with these branching lines, this was likely M. Dupain’s job until Chat arrived.

“As you wish,” he answered with a flourish she wouldn’t see. Chat was careful with his grip on the ladder, scooting it slowly the way Marinette directed, watching her intently. If she lost her balance—

“Here’s good, thanks,” she said; he set down the ladder; it hadn’t quite ceased wobbling before Marinette began working in the blank space. Even as new strokes blackened the pink walls, he couldn’t tell what these branching lines were supposed to be. It almost felt like the lines of fracture in broken glass, but not quite…

Ugh. This wasn’t what he came here for. For that matter, wasn’t _she_ the least bit curious about why _he_ was here? He frowned. He needed to focus.

Chat Noir turned on his heels, pacing toward one of the windows. The summer sun distorted the hour, casting the illusion of an endless afternoon on the bright city; in wintertime, the sky would have blackened by now, a dark curtain flecked with stars for hours.

With the music turned down, it was a little easier to find his thoughts. “Saw you on _The LadyBlog_ today. Interesting interview.” ... Alright, so he wasn’t particularly subtle; if it got him answers, it would have to be good enough. She didn’t reply right away, and for a moment Chat wondered if she hadn’t heard him, or was ignoring him.

He waited.

“Alya’s a friend of mine.” Her voice was steady. “She loves writing about Ladybug and all the super-villains she fights. I couldn’t say _no._ ”

“I really liked your drawings of the akuma. Most people don’t get to see them up close.” He turned, leaning against the windowsill to look once more towards Marinette on the ladder. She was obscured by the rungs, but he could hear the brush against the wall as she continued working.

“Yeah… I thought, if more people knew what they looked like, then maybe they could avoid being turned into villains.”

“Like you did?”

He waited. The seconds dragged into nearly a minute of silence; the stereo changed tracks. She still didn’t answer.

Chat hummed, pushing away from the wall. He couldn’t stay still like this, or keep such a distance, and he circled his way back to the ladder. The swing of his belt smacked against the plastic tarp as he passed.

“It was quite the _lion’s_ _tail!_ What was the name of your super-villain form? _Spice Wreck?_ Pretty scary.” He stood now at the base of the ladder, arms crossed, and looked up at her upside-down face. “It’s a good thing Ladybug _and_ Chat Noir were there to rescue you, huh?”

Her hair hung in disarray, a heat-flush reddening her brow and cheeks. Her expression tried to stay neutral, focused only on her painting, but he could see the narrowing around her eyes, the tense way she clenched her teeth.

Quick as shadow, Chat Noir climbed up the back of the ladder, folding his arms along the top step, peering down from his higher perch at the hanging Marinette. He was careful to avoid bumping her feet, lest he dislodge her balance, but he didn’t let his gaze stray from her this time.

She looked miserable; she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“I thought you said you didn’t go to their houses after,” she said, her voice quieter now.

“I don’t,” he replied, leaning more heavily on his arms. He didn’t like seeing her upset — it hurt now, just like it hurt in class, just like it hurt yesterday — but he couldn’t let it go, either. Nothing would be solved that way. “They don’t give me a reason to.”

Her lips pursed shut; the sweep of her arm and of the brush was a little sharper, a little less controlled, but her breath that followed was longer, heavy and measured. The next stroke was steadier. She didn’t want to say it. She held her tongue.

He refused to look away. Marinette tried to keep her focus on the wall, but she was running out of space to mark here without darkening the whole segment black. She stopped painting, laying there against the ladder, tilting her head to finally meet his eyes. There was a fatigue to her expression, a vulnerability, and he wondered what it would take to put a smile on that face.

Later, later. He kept her gaze, hoping his earnest curiosity, his sincere _worry_ would reach her. “Please, tell me.”

Marinette closed her eyes, her breath another steadying in-and-out. Measured, measured. She grabbed at the side of the ladder, and with a heave of effort she pulled herself back vertical. She had to adjust her position in order to sit properly; her legs dropped, and their feet knocked together in suspension. The handle of the paintbrush tapped at the side of the ladder, flecking bits of black against her cheek. She sat close enough that he could see the bags under her eyes, the uneven stroke of concealer. The smudges at the outer corners of her eyes, where tears had gotten caught in her mascara and eyeliner and left to dry. When her eyes opened, they remained hooded, the whites tinged pink for crying. She stared at the ladder rather than meet his eyes.

“… I didn’t want to be the first one, okay?”

Chat Noir frowned. That wasn’t an answer he expected. His brow furrowed as he asked, “The first?”

“The first one to… _not_ turn into a villain. I mean,” she hurried to add, “my best friend runs _The LadyBlog._ She’s got the scoop on _everyone_ that was transformed by an akuma. If anyone had gotten their akuma purified before they became a villain, _she_ would know, and if _she_ knew, then _I_ would know. And there isn’t anybody. Everybody else, it’s like—” she snapped her fingers. “—that. They get hurt, they become villains, that’s it.”

Marinette set the paintbrush down on the top step, next to his folded arms. He didn’t pay it any mind; who was going to notice black paint on a black cat? He kept his mind and his eyes on Marinette, and the way she seemed to work herself up and back down again, stressed and relaxed and stressed again, but always restrained. She was usually so forthright with her feelings, he thought, honest and open; what changed? She took another steadying breath.

“But not me. I didn’t think about it until after it was over, but if nobody else could do it… why could I? Isn’t that what _you_ want to know? What Alya, what the rest of _the world_ would want to know? Because. It’s bad enough already. Papillon isn’t going to forget about me, is he? If he could control everybody else, he’s not going to forget the one person he couldn’t. What’s he going to think? That _I’m_ … ?”

She trailed off, clenching her teeth with a pained inhale, but he understood. Papillon might think that Marinette was Ladybug. If he did, then that target was never going to stray. A chill rolled down Chat Noir’s back, sickly and nauseating.

Marinette’s will was strong enough to keep her fragile heart out of that villain’s grasp; what would he do to snatch it up, to capture the heart that defied him? To find some way to crush her down into another one of his pawns?

How much hurt could Marinette suffer before she let herself surrender?

When he said her name, it was quiet against his teeth, too breathy, like the murmuring of a ghost. She hunched her shoulders, legs swinging.

“I can’t make him forget. But if everyone else thinks I was just another akuma victim, then I’m nothing special. You know? They won’t remember me. It’ll be harder for his next victim to find the girl who got away if they don’t know who that _is_. Won’t it? I’m not _famous._ I’m just an ordinary girl. I’m _normal._ ”

“You are _extraordinary_.” The words tumbled out before he could think. A surprise to himself, but he couldn’t take them back. He didn’t want to. Chat threw caution aside and cupped his palm against her shoulder, hoping once more to be her physical anchor to the world outside of her thoughts. “Don’t sell yourself short, Marinette.”

Startled, her gaze flicked upward; her eyes were bright, expression open and vulnerable and he _wasn’t going to mess this up._ He gave her shoulder a light squeeze.

“And I don’t just mean about this akuma. This _chat noir_ has crossed your path a few times before, hasn’t it?” It certainly explained her bad luck. He smiled, a little wry, but pressed on. “You’ve always impressed me. You’re brilliant and courageous and _compassionate_. You always think your way out of any problem you face. You never lose your head when you’re in danger. And even when _you_ are in danger, you always worry more about the people around you. A super-villain could throw a car at you and your first concern would be whether or not someone was in the driver’s seat. You didn’t even blame your classmates for making you upset.”

Marinette’s attention didn’t waver through his speech. He watched the way her eyes opened wider, seemed to get so much bigger, summer light catching through her wet lashes. He could see the heat crossing her cheeks and the tops of her ears, felt her weight shift on the ladder as she swung her legs and crossed them together.

Once he finished, Marinette let out a little huff of air, not laughing, but the corner of her mouth twitched.

“That’s not what I was getting at…”

“Doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

She smiled, ducking her head — a sincere happiness he missed seeing on her face. If he accomplished nothing else, this felt enough.

“I _mean_ , I’m not…” Marinette exhaled, sitting up and gesturing fruitlessly with her hands, swinging concentric circles and clenched fists opening up like pantomime fireworks. “ _Marinette_ isn’t someone _Papillon_ should be watching. I don’t want anyone else watching me like that either. It’s the same for you, isn’t it?” Her smile ebbed as she asked the question, but while her voice remained serious, she didn’t seem as dour as before. “Nobody knows who Chat Noir is behind his mask. You protect your identity to keep the people around you safe, don’t you? If Papillon knew who you were, he could threaten your family or your friends. He’d make you give up your Miraculous.” She shrugged, licking her lips, her mouth dry. “What would he take from me?”

She was trying, somehow, to be serious and flippant at the same time; to express her worries without inviting _his_ worry, but it wasn’t working at all. This was his fault — Adrien’s fault. If he hadn’t hurt her so badly, her pain wouldn’t have invited the akuma in the first place. Papillon would have never discovered how extraordinary she was; she wouldn’t be left worried like this.

It was just like her, wasn’t it? For all that she said she didn’t want Papillon looking at her, it wasn’t _Marinette_ she was concerned about, was it? Exactly as he said — even when she was in danger, she was more worried about the people around her. She was thinking about her parents, she was thinking about Alya and her other classmates; she wasn’t thinking about herself at all.

His whole chest was tight — his lungs felt too small for the amount of air he needed, his heart too big and pushing too much blood through his veins, his ribs too sharp and his throat pulled too taut — but he couldn’t do nothing. He couldn’t say nothing.

“Nothing,” he said. Letting go of her shoulder, Chat lifted his hand and brought it to her chin, nudging, encouraging her to look back up. Delicately, he rubbed his thumb against her cheek, wiping off the dried specks of black paint. “He’s not going to take anything away from you, Marinette. Do you know why?”

Too stunned by his response, Marinette could only shake her head, staring. Chat smiled, bright with teeth, sincere and aching.

“Because we’re not going to let him.”

“We’re not?”

“We’re not. Because you always do so much to help the people around you… and your daring knight will be here to protect you. I’m not going to let him hurt you again.”

He felt her long exhale, a low vibration against his palm. The stress seemed to drain out of her, forced out with that air; she blinked her eyes with the slowness of deliberate action, and when they opened again, there was a sincere brightness to them. He felt her cheek curve for a smile, saw it in her eyes. He felt the pain in his chest dissipate. The tension finally eased loose.

“So what does that make Papillon, a big scary dragon? If you’re the knight and I’m the princess in this fairy tale.”

“I was thinking more of an evil wizard,” Chat said, leaning on his free palm. “Off in some cave with a bunch of dusty books and rats scurrying everywhere.”

Marinette laughed. “With hundreds of candles everywhere for his butterflies.”

“Isn’t that moths?”

“Close enough!”

They were both laughing, the strain of the past days breaking. The sense of relief was overwhelming. Chat Noir hadn’t gotten all the answers he came here to find, but seeing how much she’d cheered up in his company, he couldn’t bring himself to press on those painful tracks anymore. The bigger picture was all he needed, wasn’t it? He could let go of the smaller pieces if it meant Marinette could recover from the whole ordeal. Besides that, it was getting late — the late summer sun was finally sinking, judging by the oranges and reds that drifted into Marinette’s room. The album had reached its end while they were talking, but Chat couldn’t tell how long ago that was. The jokes trailed off into an easy silence. Letting go of Marinette, he folded his arms once more on top of the ladder, careful to avoid leaning on the still-wet bristles of her paintbrush.

“I was thinking—”

“I wanted to—”

They spoke and cut off at the same time, chuckling for the awkward timing; Chat bowed his head to Marinette, letting her go first. She rubbed the heel of her palm against her cheek, trying to get at the remaining flecks of paint. Or was it just ink? It didn’t have the right thickness or odor for wall paint.

“I was thinking, if you weren’t busy, if you… wanted to have dinner with us?”

Oh. That wasn’t what he was expecting at all. It was tempting, and _I’d love to_ was on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back. Wry and apologetic, Chat Noir shook his head.

“ _Fur_ -give me, but I couldn’t intrude. This cat was fed before he arrived—”

“I don’t mean tonight!” She interjected quickly, sitting up straight and with her arms waving to cut off his protests. “We already ate too. I meant later. This weekend. This Saturday! We’ll be going out to dinner and I wanted to know if you wanted to come… with us? It would just be the three of us otherwise and I haven’t asked them yet but I’m sure they’d love to have you along and _I_ would, too, if you… wanted to…”

Momentum built up and fizzled out just as quickly, and while Marinette’s enthusiasm seemed to fade like the smoke of a doused fire, Chat was trying to overcome shock that he’d received the offer in the first place. He knew what he wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure if it was the _right_ thing to say. He hesitated.

“Wouldn’t you rather invite one of your friends?” He asked, hearing his voice dip quieter without intending it. “It sounds like they’ve been worried about you…”

“That’s why I asked… you,” she murmured, looking to the side to avoid meeting his eyes; he felt the momentum of her legs swinging again. “It’s weird that you’re doing all this for regular old me but I’m really glad you are but I don’t know what I was thinking because this was a dumb suggestion so just forget I said anything okay? Okay, I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

“… Saturday, you said?” She was trying to let him off the hook, but Chat refused to release it. “Evil candle-collecting wizards aside, I’m all yours.”

There was a pause. “What?”

“I’m accepting your invitation.”

“Oh.” She paused then — they both did, an awkward silence expanding between them, both trying to find answer or explanation in the other’s expression. She seemed to find one first, because her face broke out into another wide smile; she laughed a little as she spoke. “Okay! Cool! I’ll let my parents know that you’re coming with us!”

“Cool,” he echoed, but Marinette was once again wound up like a turn-key toy — her attention was flitting around the room, unable to settle.

“Cool! But it’s getting kinda late and I should really finish this up so I can get to bed and go to school tomorrow so I’ll see you on Saturday?”

He didn’t need any more obvious a cue. He gripped the sides of the ladder and got his feet back out from the middle, trying not to kick her; he slid down the length of it, ignoring the steps. “Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He gave her a little wave, turning back towards the trap door exit, but her voice called after him.

“Today’s Wednesday.”

He stopped.

Right. Tomorrow would be Thursday. And Marinette had invited _Chat Noir_ , not Adrien, to Saturday’s dinner; she didn’t share homeroom with _Chat Noir_. It was very late. He was very tired. He forgot what day it was. These were all good enough excuses.

“Can’t I see you tomorrow, too?”

The words were flippant, teasing, and Chat found himself turning around, walking backwards to the loft door so he could watch Marinette’s reaction. She looked about as surprised by his words as he felt having said them, but in the end, she smiled down at him from her perch on the ladder.

“If you want,” she said. “Have a good night, Chat Noir.”


	12. Chapter 12

It was difficult for Adrien to fall asleep. Over the short dark hours, he didn’t know how many he managed to steal for rest, but the early brightening of an already-dim dark sky greeted him wide awake. He stared at his ceiling, anxious and uncertain and sick from thinking. He was caught in the realms of knowing and not knowing, between “why” and “why?”, with answers that couldn’t settle him. Why was he worried about Marinette? Because she was his friend. Why was he _so_ worried about Marinette? He didn’t know. Why was he _still_ worried? He didn’t know. Why did these stressful feelings seem to dissipate when he was around her, talking to her? Because he could see that she was okay. Why did those stressful feelings come rushing back as soon as he was out of her company? Because Marinette didn’t want _Chat Noir_ fussing over her; she wouldn’t put on shows like that with Adrien. Why? Because she wouldn’t talk to Adrien. Why? Because he screwed up. Why couldn’t he fix it? He didn’t know.

He wanted so badly for things to back to the way they were on Monday, but Adrien couldn’t rewind time. The sun was up. Thursday. It would be two days since then, once class started; it seemed so much longer already. Thursday: he had a photo shoot during lunch, fencing after class, piano lessons after fencing, a geography exam the next morning to study for — he had expectations and responsibilities to live up to. That wasn’t even _including_ if someone else was turned into a super-villain — though with how Paris had adapted to those freakish occurrences, most everyone tended to forgive any disruption in schedule if a super-villain shut down the city; it could almost be counted as a _break_. And after all that, if he was lucky, then _Chat Noir_ was going to make another trip to see Marinette.

Why?

Adrien groaned again, rubbing his hands across his face, tired and aching but too restless to sleep. He sat up in a slow rolling motion, swinging his legs over the side of his bed, and let his arms drop to balance on his knees. Why, why, why — why couldn’t he get these stressful questions to settle when there was nothing he could do to answer them? He heaved a sigh, leaning towards the nearby shelf to grab his phone from its resting place. He tapped on the screen, squinting a little at the brightness, and groaned again, flopping backwards onto the mattress. _4:12?_ What was he supposed to do for another four hours? He grabbed the phone again, squinting again at the screen in case he misread the time. Hey, that _4_ could have been an _8_ , right? He could hope that he was actually running late, couldn't he?

No. Still just past four in the morning. And he’d forgotten to plug it in, so the battery was down to a whopping 7%, with a status bar full of notifications and—

Adrien squinted harder.

“… This isn’t my phone.”

He sat up a second time, eyes skimming the room, and spotted _his_ phone sitting by his keyboard. He glanced once more at the phone in hand, confused, but when he spotted the charm dangling from it, memory hit him like a brick to a window.

Alya’s phone!

Adrien stumbled towards his computer, collapsing into his desk chair — with the unsteadiness of fatigue, he unplugged his own, fully-charged phone and plugged in Alya’s instead, watching the screen brighten for a new source of power. The cute wallpaper was the same as when he first found it, restored after the Miracle, and while habit had him punching in a passcode instinctively, it wasn’t the right one. Obviously. This was Alya’s phone. Adrien leaned back in his chair, staring at the screen. What _would_ her passcode be? He tried a couple of obvious ones — 5226 (LBCN), the date he and Ladybug first received their Miraculous, the day _after_ that, the date of _The LadyBlog’s_ first one-on-one interview with Ladybug…

_“ Finally remembered to sneak a peek? ”_

Adrien jolted in his seat at the voice; laughing, Plagg dropped down into view from _wherever_ it was he was hiding, flitting around Alya’s phone the way a crow would around an unopened bag of popcorn, trying to find the best way to get at the food inside. Adrien tried swatting Plagg out of the way, but Plagg was much quicker. Eventually the little beast settled on the phone charm, hanging onto the lanyard with one foot against the ladybug medallion, swinging back and forth like it were a tire swing.

“Would you knock that off?” This time Adrien managed to scoop him up, pinching him at the nap of his neck. The charm swung loose, knocking against Adrien’s knuckles. Plagg crossed his arms and legs, looking put-out.

_“ Can’t a guy have a little **fun** around here sometimes? ”_

“Why are you even awake, Plagg? It’s four in the morning. I’m not feeding you.”

Plagg stuck out his tongue. For a moment that’s all he did, but the longer Adrien kept him pinched at the nape, the more irritated Plagg became, until only a few seconds later he was flailing his arms and legs in petulant struggle. _“ Let me go! Come on! This is indignity! Cruelty! What crime have I committed! I demand justice! A fair trial! Eight lawyers! Six judges! My peers and comrades armed at the gates! The crowns of seven kings! The heads of the emperors in a basket! A pony! I demand liberty! Liberty! Liberty—! ”_

“Why are you being so dramatic,” Adrien muttered, dropping Plagg with an irritated shrug; he went back to trying another Ladybug Milestone for the passcode. “You’re never this energetic.”

_“ What, can’t I be excited you’re finally indulging your curiosity? ”_ The drop was no deterrent for a being that could fly; Plagg darted right back up to settle on Adrien’s shoulder, practically humming for satisfaction. _“ I was afraid you were going to forget you had it! ”_

“Yeah, but there’s no point to having it if I can’t open it, is there?” Irritated, Adrien let the plugged-in phone go skidding across his computer desk, leaning back with another long sigh, beginning to talk himself out of it. “I shouldn’t look anyway. Whatever’s on Alya’s phone belongs to Alya. I should find some way to return it… I can sneak it into her bag when she isn’t looking, or…”

_“ Got it! ”_

Adrien lurched forward. There was Plagg, sitting by Alya’s phone, batting at her ladybug charm; the screen was turned on, the lock screen bypassed, a picture of Alya with some younger girls as the wallpaper. Siblings? With a start, Adrien looked back at Plagg. “What the heck, Plagg? What did you do?” He picked up the phone, pulling the charm away from Plagg, but the screen went black, idle once more. Tapping it once more simply brought back the lock screen. He glowered. “How did you know her passcode?”

Plagg just grinned, lolling about on his desk, continuing to hum in idle taunt. Adrien dragged a hand down his face. “Okay, alright, _yes,_ I _do_ want to see if there’s still video, but—”

But that was enough: Plagg zipped up from the desk, jumped onto Alya’s phone and began punching the keys with his feet.

2 5 9 2

A L Y A

The lock screen vanished, returning the home screen picture of Alya and her family. Adrien stared at Plagg, who was back to fussing with the charm. With a sigh, Adrien shifted his grip on the phone, tugging at the lanyard until he could slip the charm free of the phone itself. Like a tiny yo-yo, Adrien let the ladybug charm dangle from his fingers before flicking it towards his desk; Plagg shot after it like a dart, charm and kwami both disappearing somewhere behind his monitors. He shook his head, dropping his attention back down to the screen. With one hand he started scrolling through her list of apps, his other grabbing back his own phone and launching up _The LadyBlog_ from a shortcut. He knew Alya had listed _somewhere_ on the blog which programs she used for her footage… a lot easier than trying to sort through which of these eighteen video-sharing apps were ones she’d tried and hadn’t uninstalled and which ones she was still using.

It took a few minutes of digging, but he finally got into the proper program, and lo and behold: a draft video, unpublished, from Tuesday morning. He hesitated. It’d hurt so much seeing Marinette undergo that torment the first time around, him and her alone in that empty bathroom, the tears on her face and the strain in her every movement; it’d hurt, hearing her describe what she was going through as she fought it. The longer he sat there, hesitating, the more he realized he was afraid of seeing it. Afraid of seeing just how badly Marinette had suffered, because of him.

He swallowed the growing lump in his throat, sitting straighter. Marinette was the one who’d endured it. If seeing what she went through gave him a better understanding… if he could figure out how much damage he’d really caused, then maybe… maybe he’d know for sure how to fix it. He just wanted to fix it. For things to go back to the way they were.

He pressed PLAY.

The camera shook as Alya ran, phone unsteadily held in one hand. The image was of her face, lacking the usual adrenaline-rich enthusiasm her other vlogs had in abundance.

“Hey Paris, hey world, it's your favorite LadyBlogger Alya here with what _could_ be a breakthrough first scoop. I'm here at Collège Françoise Dupont and we could be witnessing an akumatization in progress. Just before this broadcast, yours truly _saw_ the akuma begin its pursuit of what could be our next super-villain. There she is—”

Video spun as Alya rounded one of the hallway corners, and there was Marinette: soaking wet, stumbling backwards and sideways in evasive step, trying to outmaneuver the fluttering akuma. Her eyes never left the flight of the demon — not as agitated as Adrien saw it later, but already quicker than during their usual escape — and from the way the camera bobbed for Alya's cautious approach, it seemed like Marinette hadn't noticed her arrival at all.

Her evasion lasted a couple dodges more, her hands swatting at the akuma when it drew close to her face, but Marinette still miscalculated: one of her swings threw her balance, and the akuma snatched the opening to burrow itself into the first of her two hair-fasteners. Her breath drew in sharp. She staggered, face twisting up in a scowl. The look was angry, violent, but short-lived — it broke into pieces, overcome with such complete _sorrow_ that Adrien's whole body clenched, watching her. She didn't speak, no shouts or mumbles or cries for help; she looked the way a building did mid-destruction, collapsing in on itself. With a sob, new tears running down her already-wet cheeks, Marinette grabbed the black hair-tie and pulled with all her might, snapping the elastic. She threw it to the ground and took off running again, but before Alya moved forward, the camera dropped to the hair-tie. The picture zoomed in at motion, capturing in meticulous, creeping detail as the akuma emerged. It crawled out like from a chrysalis, its legs bending in too many places and its wings too dark, too eerie. There was a low thrum to the audio, the fluttering of its wings unlike anything natural butterflies produced.

“Oh my god...”

Adrien didn't have to imagine the shock Alya felt then. Even now, his whole body was tense for it. Plagg had emerged from the darkness at some point while Adrien was engrossed in the footage, sitting on Adrien's arm at the elbow. He still held onto the ladybug charm, but like when Adrien had watched Alya's interview with Marinette the day before, Plagg's full attention was on the screen. Neither of them spoke. Just the audio of the akuma’s low, thrumming flutter made him feel sick to his stomach.

The akuma took off once more, too much speed in its wings. Alya ran after. The girls were fast, but the demon was faster; the camera swung round, unfocused as Alya ran, smears of doors and walls of their school as they went. Marinette coming back into frame was happenstance. She wasn’t centered in it, and the akuma wasn’t visible at all, but the moment it _captured_ her was. Marinette’s sprint veered sideways and she crashed against one of the walls, her left leg almost giving out beneath her. Alya caught up, but thoughts of her blog exclusive were the furthest from her mind. Marinette's face came into view in snippets, all bad angles and mixed focus as the camera program tried to keep up. She looked sick. Her lips were moving, mouthing words, but she didn't speak.

“Marinette? Marinette, can you hear me? Marinette!”

But Marinette pushed away from the wall, away from Alya, shaking her head with increasing fervor. Again, mouthing words, but no sound. She yanked at the second hair-tie, grimacing as she pulled it taut. This one didn't snap as easily; there was a smudge of color, Alya's sleeve coming into frame as she tried to grab the elastic, but Marinette pulled away, fists tight.

“Marinette—”

“... no...”

Her voice was a warble, full of tears, but it was enough; the broken hair-tie fell from her hands, snapped in two places. The camera swung, settling as it slid into in Alya’s breast pocket. The camera lens was blacked out, facing Alya, but sound remained. Marinette’s heavy breathing; Alya murmuring comfort, trying to coax her calm. A shuffle of footsteps.

“It’s just me, okay? Let’s get out of here. We can go to the park and complain about that stupid jerk, okay?”

_“ Smart girl. I’m glad someone’s finally noticed. ”_

“Shut up, Plagg.”

“Come on, Marinette… chin up? It’s not the end of the world.”

Another shuffle — the not-quite darkness of the smothered camera jolted with Alya’s sharp “Hey!” — followed by the unmistakable stamping of Marinette’s sodden shoe against the hard floor. Not for running, not for getting away, but the way a child might punctuate a tantrum. Or like trying to squash a bug.

An aggressive, relentless insect that no amount of force could stop.

“No! No! I said _no!_ ” Vehement, but her voice was still quiet, barely able to get through her tear-clogged throat. Another catch in her breath, closer now, with another scuffle, hands on fabric and shoving, and this time it was Alya that spun into the wall, a loud burst as the phone (and Alya behind it) hit the wall for Marinette’s throw. Retreating footsteps. The steady pursuit. Alya stopped calling out Marinette’s name, and Marinette wasn’t talking — wasn’t transforming — so all the microphone caught was their footsteps through the empty hallways, barely-audible snips of conversation coming from the passing classrooms. If anyone in those classes had seen the pursuit, they might have just dismissed it as another student running late; Marinette tended to run in and out of class all the time as it was, so it was probably a usual sight anyway.

Ironically, the background noise grew louder when Alya entered the library, the quiet murmur of students at nearby tables and among the shelves a low din on the recording. Alya’s run transitioned to a quick walk, and the heaviness of her steps betrayed her taking the stairs two at a time. When she reached the top of the landing, her pace stopped.

“Marinette… honey, you have to stop…” There: scissors on fabric, on leather, as she tried to cut apart the shoe the akuma stole. The other one she must have ripped apart during the chase; Alya hadn’t made any comment. Marinette’s stuttering tears, her gasping hiccups, the abject _misery_ in her voice was clear as crystal, too cleanly preserved in the recording. Alya’s voice was quiet, trying to be calming. “Please, what you’re doing isn’t working…”

The shoe hit the ground; Alya walked forward, hands on the fabric of Marinette’s sleeves, and the pair of them walking. Marinette’s feet were bare, much quieter against the carpet, but when it traded for tile, he could hear the easy difference between the quiet, dampened padding of Marinette’s soles compared to the squeak of Alya’s rubber heels. The door closed behind them. Marinette was still crying.

“This is _crazy_. Those things are magic, Marinette, you can’t beat it like this.”

“I _know that!_ ” Her voice was louder now, frustrated shouting, clearer and directed. “But what _else_ am I supposed to do?”

Silence. No running, no thrumming, no background chatter. Only silence.

Then, vehement: “ **No.** ”

“Ladybug can fix it,” said Alya, her voice quiet and her words quick, at the end of her rope too. “Once word gets out that there’s another villain on the loose, she and Chat Noir will be over in a minute and fix everything. It’s going to be okay, Marinette. You don’t—”

“No—”

“—have to keep _fighting_. It’ll be okay! You won’t even remember most of it, _believe me_. Whatever happens—”

“He can put it a thousand different ways, hit me a hundred thousand times, but I can’t—”

“—Everything will go back to normal, I _promise_ —”

“I _can’t_ —”

“You can’t _win_ like this, so just—”

“ _I’m not going to hurt Adrien!_ ”

Her voice reverberated across the tiled room, and Alya had no interruption. The quick back-and-forth was slain in that declaration, in that name; the only sound that remained was crying.

_“ Adrien? ”_

Plagg sat on his wrist, arm in front of the smeared dark color of Alya’s paused phone screen, but his eyes were on Adrien.

Adrien dropped the phone on the desk; Plagg hopped off his hand as he curled forward, wrapping his arms around his stomach and pressing his forehead against the cold desk. He was crying. Adrien was the one crying. Adrien was the one with the thickness clogging his throat, with his stomach clenching for sobs he didn’t want to make, his teeth clenched and breath hissing when he tried to breathe in, but the barricade failing as another sob wrenched its way out. His cheeks hurt for heat, and his eyes were burning; his lashes were soaked in tears, and some of them dripped free to the desk, but others clung to his face, dragging misery across his features.

It wasn’t _fair_. How was it fair? Adrien had always liked Marinette. He’d always wanted her friendship. She was so smart and so creative and so kind, and it had taken so long for her to warm up to him. He’d screwed up back then and he’d screwed up this week and Marinette had fought so hard against Papillion because she didn’t want to hurt _him_ and somehow that was what hurt worst of all. Marinette was _too selfless_. He wanted to blame that, blame the Marinette that always put other people above herself, blame that she couldn’t just let herself be angry at him then or acknowledge that she was still angry at him now, wanted to blame her stupid selflessness, but in the end it cycled right back to Adrien. It wasn’t _our classmates_ she wanted to protect; it wasn’t _Chloé_ that she faulted. She knew it was his fault, but she still took all that suffering on herself so she wouldn’t inflict it on him.

And maybe, he thought, as his fingers dug into his scalp and he struggled to breathe, maybe that was why Marinette was so cold to him. She hadn’t forgotten anything. How many minutes, how many hours, had she spent fighting that akuma? Even when he’d taken the cursed item away from her, had it actually severed the connection? In the hours it took for Ladybug to arrive, when Marinette had left the school and gone who-knew-where, had that monster’s voice been in her ear the whole time? Had she needed to refuse that entire time? Those long, lonely hours — she hadn’t needed to suffer them at all if she’d been willing to blame Adrien for hurting her. She’d even lied to her best friend to protect him. _Why?_ Did she hate him now, for everything she had to suffer? Did she resent how much she had to sacrifice to shield him from blame? It wasn’t fair. Why wouldn’t she give him the blame he rightly deserved? If she’d just gotten mad at him then, she wouldn’t hate him now.

He felt Plagg land on the back of his head with all the force of a thrown ball of socks; the kwami crawled around through his hair, and for a moment, it felt like comfort. He didn’t say anything — there wasn’t much he could say, was there? Still, the presence helped steady his heart, and the worst of the tears passed by. He took deep breaths to steady himself, scrubbing his hands across his cheeks to wipe off the worst of the tears, but catching sight of Alya’s paused phone screen just made him feel sick. He flipped the phone over and pushed away from the desk, hurriedly getting to his feet. He didn’t want to stay cooped up in here.

It was early enough. Nobody would notice him leaving.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Season 2 has finally begun in earnest, and we've crossed some plot points and events in-show that diverge this story solidly from canon. If you've kept up with S2, you'll know what I mean. As such, to clarify: this story incorporates the events up to but **not including** Volpina or Season 2. There are some points of "lore" being used in this story with regards to Akuma and the Miraculous that have not as-of-yet been proved or disproved by canon, and as they're rather important to the plot here, they're not going to be changed regardless of canon developments. To the best of my ability, this story will not contain deliberate spoilers or references to the events of S2 -- if there wind up being overlaps, c'est la vie.
> 
> Once again, thank you for reading, and for your patience.

A simple _Plagg, transform me_ could have sent him into the early Paris morning as Chat Noir, but it was Adrien Agreste that slipped quietly out the mansion’s front doors. Fully dressed and just as depressed, he took to the old streets with hands in his pockets. His thoughts, as ever, seemed to spiral away from him.

_“ You’ve really got it bad for this girl, don’t you? ”_

But going as Adrien meant going with Plagg, and even an irritating companion was still company that Adrien desperately needed. He shrugged his shoulders, kicking at nothing.

“Something like that,” he muttered, his eyes skimming the faces of the passing buildings. It was rare for Adrien to be anywhere without anyone else _and_ able to take such a leisurely pace; another time, and he might have enjoyed the scenery. He wished any of it could be distracting enough, but Marinette’s voice would not stop echoing in his head. “I just want things to be _good_ again.”

The kwami zipped out of his inner jacket pocket to loiter instead at the collar of his shirt. Closer to his ear, but just out of Adrien’s peripheral vision. It wasn’t like Plagg to hide from Adrien, but maybe he just didn’t want to look at the misery still etched into Adrien’s face. Heaven knew he wasn’t in any hurry to check his reflection in the passing storefront windows. Adrien dug his hands deeper into his pockets, tightened the shrug in his shoulders, and listened to the _pat-pat_ of his footsteps as he walked.

_“ If you ask me, there’s no point to worrying about girls. Now, getting in with a good fromagère, that’s a worthwhile pursuit. ”_

“I’m not buying you cheese at five in the morning.”

_“ Fine, fine. Kill me a little more each day, why don’t you. ”_

The usual blasé attitude was reassuring, in a way. Even if everything else in the world seemed to be turning on its head, Plagg remained his eternally hedonistic self.

Mostly.

_“ But if getting back in her good graces is the only way I’ll get any rest, then I don’t have any choice. ”_   Adrien couldn’t see the expression on Plagg’s face, but that low tone of voice made him stop in his tracks. He scooped Plagg out of his resting spot at Adrien’s collar to pull the kwami into view. Plagg rested in his cupped palms, seeming disinterested in the whole affair, but it didn’t stop Adrien’s scrutiny.

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” said Adrien, letting the doubt carry in his voice. Plagg only seemed to revel in it.

_“ What’s not to like? You set things right, you stop moping, I don’t have to see you looking like an orphaned kitten begging for milk every day. Everybody wins. ”_

“And how would you help me set things right?”

Plagg’s grin was all teeth. _“ Girls still keep diaries, right? I find where she talks about how you broke her heart, you patch things up like the ‘knight in shining armor’ you want to be, you get married and have a bunch of kids in ten years, I get a good hundred-fifty, two hundred years of Camembert in repayment. See? Everybody wins. ”_

With an irritated groan, Adrien tossed Plagg over his shoulder like a wadded-up piece of garbage, feeling disgusted by the offer. “I’m not going through her _diary_. I’m pretty sure that’d just make things worse.”

As ever, such little abuses didn’t mean much to a creature that could fly; the kwami drifted back into view, no worse for wear. _“ You never like my ideas. ”_

“Your ideas are never _good_.”

_“ I never claimed to be good, ”_   declared the kwami, pressing a paw against his torso. _“ But my ideas are only exactly the kind you’d never come up with on your own. ”_

He shook his head and continued walking. Plagg wasn’t _wrong_ , but it wasn’t saying much: Adrien simply wasn’t the type of person to go through other people’s things or take advantage of them, so those tactics never occurred to him. The worst he did was sneak away from his bodyguard to go shopping for comic books or head to the cinema, but he felt that didn’t count because ordinary teenagers didn’t _have_ to sneak away from bodyguards in the first place. In any case, Adrien was sure that—even if he _were_ more impulsive and self-centered, as Plagg seemed to be encouraging—he still wouldn’t want to rummage through Marinette’s things to make amends. Going through _Alya’s_ phone hadn’t helped matters much, had they?

Plagg zipped in front of Adrien’s face, arms crossed.

_“ You don’t like my ideas. So what do you want to do instead? ”_

“I don’t know.” With each passing day, each hour, it felt more and more like there was nothing Adrien _could_ do. “I just want things to go back to normal.”

_“ And what’s that? Saying ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ and waiting for an excuse to talk to her? Hoping you can save her from another villain without her realizing it’s you? ”_

“No…,” his voice trailed, uncertain where Plagg was going with this and disliking the journey already.

_“ No? But isn’t that what’s normal? Because, ”_ he added, his little tail swaying behind him in coy victory, _“ going to her house isn’t normal. Hanging out with her isn’t normal. Being her **friend** isn’t normal for Adrien at all, is it? ”_

“That’s not true.” The words spilled forth with the speed and grace of a sprint across ice – quick, but careening wildly to keep from falling. “We’re friends. Adrien and Marinette are _friends_.”

_“ Yeah? ”_ Plagg looked less than impressed. _“ What’s her favorite food? Favorite color? Where did she grow up? What does she do after school? Why is she always late? When’s her birthday? What does she like about **you**? ”_

Adrien’s teeth clacked together. His shoulders hunched. He had ideas for some. Her bedroom was decorated in swathes of pink, as were the fabrics of her bookbag and her purse, but she’d never said which shade she preferred, or if her favorite was something else entirely. Her father made her crêpes when she was upset, but was that her favorite, or simply a comfort? He’d assumed she was a born-and-raised Parisian, with how long she’d attended the schools here, but couldn’t she have moved from somewhere else? What were her hobbies? She played video games and she did art, but were those hobbies, or just pastimes? She frequently came in late and more than once he’d overheard their classmates asking her why she’d missed this or that class, but while Adrien usually _arrived_ to school on time, his attendance was much spottier, so hers hadn’t struck him as unusual. As for her birthday, he hadn’t a clue; he knew Chloé’s, of course, only a few days away, and Nino’s wasn’t for months yet, but nobody else in class had volunteered that information, and Adrien had never thought to ask. The final question only left him feeling nauseous.

His prolonged silence should have been answer, but Plagg merely crossed his little arms, waiting, staring; Adrien looked away. “I don’t know. Okay? It never really came up.”

At first the kwami only hummed a little note in response; Adrien could see him gliding closer out of the corner of his eye, but in the end, Plagg didn’t say anything else. He merely settled back in Adrien’s pocket, silent.

_Real help you are,_ Adrien thought, the barb weak even within his mind. It wasn’t Plagg’s fault that Adrien was in this mess to begin with, and granting him the power to become Chat Noir was the greatest advantage anyone could have given him. Even if she wouldn’t talk about everything, at least Marinette _talked_ to Chat. If he could use that mask to help her move forward from this, use last night and tonight and Saturday and any other day he could steal to put the smile back on her face in the public sun, if he could protect her from Papillon’s certain revenge, then maybe she would finally be able to look at Adrien again, and maybe, maybe, he could right all his wrongdoings as his own self.

A sudden noise cut through his thoughts with violent intensity, a single blaring note that reverberated through his skull – Adrien wheeled backward, hands covering his ears, tripping and falling backwards as his heel caught on the raised lip of the sidewalk. His tailbone slammed hard against the concrete, pain an electric shock up his spine; the blaring of the horn ceased as the car passed in front of him. It didn’t so much as slow down as it went. “Holy…” he murmured, trailing off. He’d been so caught up in his thoughts he hadn’t paid the slightest attention to where he was or where he was going, and wouldn’t his father go ballistic if Adrien got hit by a car the _one time_ he left without his driver?

For once, luck was on his side.

The car had stolen the cover of his introspection, leaving Adrien hyper-aware of himself, of the physical world, of the gravel and dirt digging into his palms and the seeping cold of the pavement beneath him. It was then that he realized he’d been walking with no destination, but instead of finding himself in some alien neighborhood, some unfamiliar crossing he’d never visited, Adrien recognized exactly where he was. He knew this intersection, these buildings, even under the remnant darkness of an early dawn. In recognition came resignation. After all, with how his thoughts had continued circling her, why _wouldn’t_ his feet carry him straight to Marinette’s door? He hadn’t yet made it that close, thanks to the cut-off, but his destination was clear – but as he sat here now, half a block away from her building, his body seemed pinned to the pavement, unable even to stand.

Where was he supposed to go now? He obviously hadn’t been planning this – and it wasn’t like he could go inside anyway. None of the front lights were on; the boulangerie wouldn’t be open for hours yet. Where did that leave him? Was he supposed to knock on their apartment door, try to apologize over breakfast? Would she even be _awake_ right now? His gaze flicked up the face of the building, counting floors to find her bedroom window.

Those uppermost lights were on – and in that bright window was a silhouette, like sunlight cutting around the eclipsing moon. There stood Marinette, staring out. Staring down.

She was staring at Adrien.

His heart slammed against the inside of his ribs and sternum with such force he felt himself stumble despite sitting still; his throat shriveled up, words and breath stolen away. How long had she been standing there? How long had she been watching him? As he stared, trying to catch the details of her at this great distance, she didn’t move or look away. She stared back with equal intensity. If he wasn’t mistaken, she was wearing the same shirt he’d seen her in last night, and the curve of her silhouette looked as though her hair was untied, a disarray of dark locks twisting around her collar.

All he could think of was Marinette backed against the bathroom wall, her hands digging into her messy hair and clamping her hands over her ears, crying through rejection. All he could think of was her voice, clear and forceful and sharp as the knife that seemed to be wedged between his ribs, shouting his name. _I’m not going to hurt Adrien,_ she said, but what did that make any of this? He felt himself standing, moving forward before he could think about it, step by step coming closer to the building. In her window, Marinette didn’t move, still watching him. Was that her hand pressed against the glass? A wave, or a dismissal? He couldn’t tell, but still he walked, a tide drawn to shore.

It was Marinette who broke the connection. As Adrien watched, her head turned to look over her shoulder, but her hand remained pressed against the glass. Adrien stopped walking. Her attention had felt like invitation – like a door that had swung open after so many days bolted and barred – but the longer she spent looking away, the narrower that doorway seemed. He couldn’t even draw breath, anxious tension rending him completely immobile. Marinette’s mouth moved for speaking, a conversation Adrien could not read at this distance, but the mood spoke loud enough. Conflict in the line of her shoulders; distress in the way her hand curved against the window, tightening into a fist. Shame, in the way her whole body seemed to shrink upon itself. Defeat, as her knuckles dragged down the glass.

The blinds dropped like a guillotine blade. The open doorway, the moment of connection, the isolated understanding – it was all cut away by that clattering white shield. His hands curled into fists at his sides, nails biting into his aching palms, and his body couldn’t decide if it wanted to rush forward and bang on the building’s back door until Marinette opened it or if he wanted to simply start shouting up at her window from the middle of the sidewalk. The air was cold in his mouth, and it hissed against his teeth for every too-quick breath.

_“ Who do you think she was talking to? ”_

The familiar voice cut through the haze of Adrien’s frustration. His racing heart, his aching lungs, his shaking limbs – in just a sentence, the heat and the fury of them all cooled, and Adrien found himself once more pulled back to reality with the same disorienting suddenness as the speeding car only minutes before. Plagg floated in the periphery of Adrien’s vision, but he wasn’t looking at him; the kwami was staring up at Marinette’s window as well.

“Who she was … talking to?”

Plagg turned his head to look at Adrien, his little paws crossed in front of his chest; one of his ears flicked backwards, an uncommon but not _unfamiliar_ tell of irritation.

_“ You were staring at her for aaaaaaaages, weren’t you? Were you actually using your eyes? ”_

Plagg was trying to lead Adrien to some conclusion – and as soon as he realized that, he understood what the kwami meant.

“Somebody interrupted her.” That much was obvious, but the rest of the theory was fragile in his thoughts, and cautious on his tongue. “She… it looked like she was arguing with someone. Not an _argument_ , but…”

_“ But? ”_

“But… like… like she didn’t agree with them?”

_“ How weird, ”_ said Plagg, mouth stretching wide for an exaggerated yawn. _“ When did that girl get complacent? ”_

It might have been wrapped in an insult, but Plagg was right. Adrien stared up at the shuttered window, thoughts changing tracks. Marinette _wasn’t_ the type to cave easily, was she? She never backed down when she was against Chloé, or a teacher in the wrong, or _Papillon himself_ – so why would she now?

“Maybe she didn’t have a choice,” he said finally, turning his gaze away from the boulangerie and turning on his heel, changing direction towards the school. “Her parents have been really worried… I don’t think she’d fight them when the mood’s like this.” They only wanted what was best for her, he knew, and Marinette would know that much as well. In the wake of the damage Adrien had done, had her parents forbidden her from talking to him? Was that, perhaps, why she deflected him at school? Did _she_ want to talk to him, but was restrained from doing so? The way she had watched him just now, that the blinds only came down after she was interrupted – did that mean Marinette herself was willing to let Adrien repair this bridge between them? Had she been told to close those blinds? Had she closed them to hide the fact it was _Adrien_ she was watching?

There were too many possibilities, and—as ever—no answers, but they were possibilities that came with _hope_.

For now, hope was enough.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it turns out having Adrien _almost_ get hit by a car last chapter jinxed me, because _that same friggen day_ I!!!!!! got hit by a car!!!!!
> 
> it sucked and im fine but i can't believe hawkmoth tried to run me over for that update.

There was a coffee cup on the desk. This was strange. It was one of those disposable paper cups with the cheap plastic lids from some foreign café, which Adrien never drank, certainly hadn’t bought, and which had _not_ been sitting on the desk when he’d fallen asleep before class started. Blearily, he blinked, eyes full of sand and too much light, and squinted instead to his side where Nino was sitting, reading a magazine with his headphones on. There was no cup on his side of the desk. With a groan for fatigue, Adrien slowly pushed himself upright, one hand scrubbing at his eyes, the other braced against the edge of the desk to keep from tipping over.

“Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty,” Nino drawled, pulling down his headphones to give Adrien a once-over. Adrien took a drink from the cup, grimacing through the taste and the temperature. Bitter _and_ lukewarm. That wasn’t a good sign.

“What time is it?”

“Study hall isn’t over yet, so eleven…” A pause as he checked his phone. “Eleven-thirty-eight.”

If he’d been more awake, the shock might have made Adrien drop the cup entirely; as it was, fatigue slowed his reactions, and he was able to set it down without incident. On the other hand, it meant he had no reservation about letting his face drop down to the desk with another groan of frustration.

“I slept through history _and_ math?”

Nino patted him on the shoulder. It helped. “I told them your dad’s been running you ragged, so they’d let you get some sleep. Made me take notes for you, though, so you’re welcome.”

“You don’t take notes. You hate taking notes. I’ve never seen you take notes?”

“You’re welcome.”

With more effort, Adrien removed his face from the desk, sitting up properly. Awareness came back in pieces, his thoughts sluggish. He’d gotten to school well before class started, after that strange staring contest with Marinette at dawn. The doors were unlocked when Adrien arrived, even if the campus was mostly deserted. Between stress and his lack of sleep the night before, it hadn’t taken much for Adrien to succumb to temptation in the empty classroom. Apparently he’d needed it if he only woke up a solid five hours later. _And_ he still had a photoshoot at lunch, and the rest of the school day to get through, and fencing, and piano, and Adrien wanted nothing more than to crawl under the desk and sleep until Saturday.

He took another grimacing gulp of coffee.

“Thank you,” he said finally, fingers tapping the side of the cup. “I needed it. And this too. I’m going to need a lot of help getting through today.”

“Oh, that?” Nino finally flipped his magazine shut, letting it fall to the desk. He shook his head, chagrinned. “Not me. Alya got it for Marinette, but Marinette didn’t want it, said it looked like you needed it more, so Alya gave it to me to give to you.”

At the sound of her name, Adrien’s attention shot to the benches behind them – but the spaces were empty. The whole classroom was, just about, except for him and Nino up front, and Nathanaël near the back, engrossed in his sketchbook. Right. Study hall. He looked back to Nino, more alert. “Marinette said that?”

“Yeah. That’s about the only thing she _has_ said today. She looked like a real zombie. Aside from that—” Nino gestured to Adrien’s coffee cup with a twirling of his fingers “—she hasn’t talked at all. Even Alya’s getting the cold shoulder. It’s weird.”

“Weird?” It was taking time to process. “Wait, what do you mean, even Alya?”

Nino could only shrug, and sigh, propping his elbow on the desk and turning where he sat; it let Adrien see just how flummoxed he was about the whole affair. “Like, before class? Aside from the coffee thing, it didn’t matter what Alya tried to talk about, Marinette was just—” With a free hand, Nino dragged his pinched thumb and forefinger against his mouth, pantomiming a zipper. “Juleka tried talking to her between periods and got ignored, _I_ tried asking her if she had plans after class, got ignored. It’s like she’s not even here.”

Only a week ago, the thought of Marinette _ignoring_ anybody would have been incomprehensible; today, it was far too easy to imagine that deathly demeanor, the sickly pallor to her face and the dimness of her eyes. It was almost like purifying the akuma had done damage to Marinette herself – there’d been no supervillain to remove, after all. Like putting bleach to a stain, and leaving glaring scars where the dyes had been eaten away. Then again, that didn’t seem right either, because the Marinette at school was still so markedly different from the Marinette that Chat Noir was keeping an eye on. Even evasive, even depressed, she was still lively. She still talked to him. Why the difference?

Adrien was seriously sick of _whys_.

Nino put a hand on Adrien’s shoulder, squeezing, pulling his attention back out of his thoughts. “Hey, listen… You’re really worried about her, right? … That’s kind of obvious,” he said, answering himself with a sigh. Adrien didn’t interrupt; it seemed like Nino was going somewhere with this. “What I mean is… I’m sorry. About yesterday. I shouldn’t have been giving you grief about Chloé just because _I_ don’t like her. I know she’s your friend, and if you say she didn’t put you up to it, then I believe you.”

It wasn’t anything Adrien expected, but the apology soothed over some of the tight stress still bristling beneath his skin. Warmth and affection for his friend bubbled in his chest, and he couldn’t help but smile in return.

“Thanks. That… really means a lot to me.”

Nino smiled back, letting his hand fall away. “Cool. It’s already bad enough with Marinette being like this. I don’t want you to think nobody’s on your side. Not that anyone’s _not_ on your side. Pretty sure everybody knows what happened Tuesday was an accident.”

“At least there’s that,” Adrien muttered, letting the breath come out of him in a rush. He wouldn’t know if he’d be able to handle it if Marinette was acting like this and the entire class was out for his blood. (Between the two, though, being hated by everybody else seemed like it would hurt less than watching Marinette suffer.) “I think Alya would have dumped me in the Seine the day it happened if it’d been intentional.”

Nino laughed. “She would’ve had help, too. Nobody turns my friends into villains and gets away with it.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Hey, hey, that goes for you, too! If someone makes you go all ballistic with the tarragon, I’d be right there to throw them in the river.”

It was a weird form of comfort, but when Nino held up a loose fist, Adrien didn’t hesitate before bumping it with his own. Even if everything else in Adrien’s life was making less and less sense the further away they got from the cake-tastrophe, at least he could still depend on his best friend. But Nino’s jab about spices left Adrien with a grimace and an uncertainty he wasn’t sure how to deal with. Adrien and Alya both knew that Marinette was lying about turning into a super-villain, and Nino was Adrien’s best friend _and_ was friends with both Alya and Marinette; it both seemed right that Nino _should_ know too, but also that Adrien shouldn’t be telling _anyone_ what Marinette was trying to keep secret. Not that _Adrien_ was supposed to know _why_ she was lying – the only person she’d confessed her fears to was Chat Noir. 

“What’s that face for?”

Great. Adrien grimaced anew, scrubbing his bangs out of his face. “Sorry, this whole… _mess._ I’d throw myself in the Seine right now if that’s what it took to set things right.”

( _“Couldn’t hurt,”_ he thought, or thought he heard, but Nino hadn’t said anything, and Plagg knew better than to make comments like that at school.)

“Well, nothing’s gonna change hanging around here, right?” Nino grabbed his magazine and shoved it in his bag, rising from the bench. Taking cue, Adrien took up the cold cup of (Marinette’s) coffee and downed the rest, wincing all the while, and lazily threw it towards the trash bin nearest the teacher’s desk. He didn’t need to look to see if he’d made the shot – he heard the cup bounce against the inner plastic liner, not even clipping the rim of the trash before sinking perfectly inside – and instead grabbed his bag and swung it over his shoulder. Nino shot a look to the back of the room, waving. “Hey Nathanaël, you wanna come with us, or are you good here?”

Nathanaël glanced up with a start, eyes wide. His gaze flicked between Nino and Adrien, but his countenance relaxed when he settled back on Nino. “No, I’m good.”

Nino took the turn-down in stride, already heading for the classroom door – but when Adrien looked back at Nathanaël, he found that the other boy hadn’t gone back to his drawing. His eyes were locked on Adrien in a cold stare. Eyes wide and unwavering, he lifted his pen to the side of his neck, and with a sharp gesture pulled it sideways – like slashing a knife across his throat.

Adrien hurried out of the room to catch up with Nino in the hallway, heart racing. He knew a threat when he saw one, and even if Adrien knew it didn’t _literally_ mean Nathanaël was going to _literally_ kill him, it blew Nino’s platitude away like so much smoke. There were definitely people who blamed Adrien for what had happened to Marinette – and the longer this went on, he thought, the greater that number would be.

Drowning in the Seine was getting more and more tempting.

It was a short walk to the library, where the rest of their class had gone for study hall. Nino pushed open the doors to the low murmur of whispers and turning pages, the hum of the air conditioner and the electric lights above them; Adrien followed after, trying to push Nathanaël’s threat from his mind. He didn’t have time to worry about anybody else. Alix and Mylène were at the first table they passed, working through the day’s math assignment; Mylène looked up with a small smile when she caught sight of Adrien, but Alix ignored them, focused on her work. The reactions were more pronounced than they were yesterday, he realized, for the further they walked, the more Adrien caught classmates and strangers alike glancing his way. Some were pitying, empathetic, understanding, while others were more hostile. Nobody else gave him a direct threat like Nathanaël, but Ivan and Juleka both looked particularly sour when he caught their eyes. Great. For a moment Adrien wondered if Nino was deliberately taking him on a tour of distaste, but after turning a corner at one of the bookcases, he saw their destination: one of the more secluded study-tables, a wide expanse of dark wood with a smattering of low cushioned chairs crowded around it.

There sat Alya. Alone. Upset. A coldness swept through him, and he faltered where he stood, unsure what to do. Nino didn’t have his same hesitation, and so dropped his bag on the table carelessly and sat down beside Alya with a much more pronounced concern on his face. Alya had several books open on the table in front of her, but she obviously wasn’t reading any of them, her glasses perched on the crown of her head and her face tucked into her folded arms. Nino’s hand uneasily settled between her shoulder blades, lingering for a moment before he tried sweeping it up and down her spine. The movement pulled at the ice forming at Adrien’s feet, and with a sharp breath, he forced himself to approach the table. He took the seat at Alya’s other side.

“Alya?”

She wasn’t shaking for tears, but her breath was thick with them. Each inhale rasped wet on her teeth, and each exhale was a shudder. Adrien wasn’t sure what to do with his hands, or what to say, and with a reluctance that felt like weakness, Adrien eventually placed his hand on her shoulder.

“What happened?”

It took several more breaths before Alya could steady, pushing back against her arms, sitting up. Adrien had never seen her without her glasses on, and while her eyes seemed smaller without them, their color was made achingly brighter for the water still there. She clenched her teeth, swallowed, and scrubbed her face on her shirt sleeve.

“I… I just wanted her to talk to me…” Marinette. Adrien’s hand spasmed, clenching her shoulder a little tighter. Nino’s eyes moved from Alya to Adrien, and the weight of that gaze anchored him. He forced himself to uncurl his fingers, to rest his hand more delicately. Alya took another couple of breaths. “She hasn’t talked to me since the interview. She wouldn’t answer my emails, or my calls, and… and her parents would kick me out if I came over—” Her mouth was a grimace, teeth clenched and bared as the air rushed wet between them; she kept blinking through a scowl, trying to keep the tears back. “—They’ve _never_ turned me away! She’s my buh- _best friend_ and she keeps sh-shutting me _out._ I just. I just wanted her to talk to me, but…”

Nino kept the steady rhythm on her back, warm strokes up and down against the rough fabric; Adrien set his hand on hers. Alya took it immediately, and he felt her trembles reverberate up his arm, felt the clammy dampness of her palm. He hoped it helped at all. Her breathing came faster in her silence, more forceful. 

“I told her that whatever it was, she could talk to me. Nobody knows akuma better than I do. Nobody knows _her_ like I do. I told her that it’s what friends are _for,_ and she just… after _everything,_ she just—!”

Her grip on Adrien’s hand had tightened, shaking, and for a moment he was afraid his bones would snap under the pressure. He looked at Nino; Nino looked at Alya. Alya looked between them both, grief transforming into anger, and when she spoke, it was with a vitriol that Adrien had never heard from her before. It was like the hiss of a smaller, angrier creature – like a polecat, or a fox, or a dog that had been kicked too many times, and only just now remembered it had teeth and claws enough to fight back.

“She said, ‘then maybe I don’t want _friends _right now.’ ”__

____

Anger created anger, and Adrien’s heart had been volatile for days; the pain and the frustration Alya felt only fed into his own, and he crushed his tongue between his molars to keep from adding his own arsenic outburst to the poisonous air. How could she say that? He wanted to be upset with Marinette because it was easy – there wasn’t any reason for her to hurt Alya just because she was unhappy, and Adrien couldn’t stand when people took out their problems on the innocent people around them. He’d seen it enough in his father, and in the industry, in high society and down, in his classmates and in strangers and in the victims and catalysts of Papillon’s schemes; the acid in his throat had a familiar burn. Nino was the steadiest of them, his voice a series of quiet murmurs, _hush, shh, shh,_ the sweep of his palm on Alya’s back like a metronome.

____

“She’s not herself right now,” said Nino, speaking softly—but from the way he kept flicking his gaze to Adrien, he realized Nino meant this for _both_ of them. Adrien kept ahold of Alya’s hand, their grip mutually tight. “She wouldn’t say that if she was.”

____

“I _know_ she’s not herself, that’s why I want to _help_ —” Alya hissed, bristling.

____

“ _I_ know. And I think she knows, too.”

____

“Then why won’t she talk to me? Avoiding me, _lying_ to everyone, when—”

____

“She’s afraid.”

____

The words cut off Alya’s reply, and both she and Nino looked at Adrien with open surprise.

____

He swallowed – the bile, the roiling anxiety, the misery and blame that had been plaguing him for days, he swallowed and pushed them down – and forced his hand to loosen its grip on Alya’s. He took a breath. “I mean, this is Marinette we’re talking about. She would never _want_ to hurt you. Nino said she agreed to do that video for the LadyBlog to make up for hitting you, right?” The small pause where he waited for their agreement—a pair of silent nods—wasn’t enough for Adrien to figure out where he was going with this, but it was too late to stop now. “She must have been worried you would have held it against her otherwise. She adores you, Alya.”

____

“Yeah, how many pairs of Ladybug socks has she made for you now?”

____

Alya glanced down at the table, and Adrien heard her foot scuffing at the carpet. “Fourteen…”

____

Adrien almost smiled at that. Of course Marinette would do that. Of course Alya would remember exactly how many gifts she’d received. He pressed on, expression growing more serious as he went. He spoke more slowly, more careful; he was treading into what he'd learned as Chat Noir, and if he slipped now, suspicion would fall on his shoulders instead. He was running out of options. “She would do anything for you, Alya. But right now, I think she’s afraid… she’s scared of something. And whatever that something _is,_ I bet… she’s afraid _that_ will hurt you worse than pushing you away does now.” He wanted to be upset with Marinette because it was easy; only in realizing how easy it was did he see the trap of it. “And if she made _you_ cut ties with her, then…” 

____

“Then Alya would tell _us._ ” Nino’s eyes widened, his exhale heavy. His hand left Alya’s back so he could scrub at an itch of nerves on the back of his neck, readjust his hat, and sigh once more. “And between the three of us, the whole school’d hear about it by the end of the day. She doesn’t want to burn one bridge, she’s trying to set the whole river on fire.”

____

Alya dug her palms against her eyes. Her breathing was still quick for distress, but she was trying to keep it steady. It took a moment, but eventually she pulled her glasses back down onto her nose, her frustration a sigh that echoed Nino’s. “This is such a _mess._ ”

____

“That’s what I don’t get,” said Nino, arms folding on the table and leaning in, closer to them both. “Ladybug fixed everything, right? Marinette shouldn’t even remember what happened. That’s how it was for me on your birthday. Right, Alya? It’s the same for you, isn’t it?”

____

Adrien looked at Alya, who was looking at him; in tilts of head and quirks of eyebrow and the minute narrowing-and-widening of eyes they spoke rapidly. If Nino was asking these questions, then they owed him the truth, right? Of what happened to Marinette? Of what Marinette had _done?_ That nobody else had done, that nobody else knew _could_ be done? They trusted him not to spread it to anyone else, right? He’d known Marinette longer than either of them, and he could see things they couldn’t. He was her friend – he was _their_ friend.

____

While Adrien had been hesitant to make that decision on his own, with Alya here, it was easier. They nodded at one another in perfect agreement. With one last squeeze for support, Adrien let go of her hand as he stood. Nino looked surprised. Alya didn’t.

____

“Where are you going?”

____

Adrien rolled his shoulders as he swung his bag into place. “I’m going to look for Marinette. I know—” His words were rushed, but he bit down on his cheek, splaying his hands midair as though to brace a fall. He took a breath. He continued slower. “I know I’m the last person she wants to see, but I don’t want this to be how things end. If she wants to set fires, then I’m the one who should be getting burned.”

____

He could tell from the looks on their faces that they didn’t agree. Neither said anything to dissuade him, though, so Adrien took that as permission enough. He turned his attention back to Alya. “You’ll catch him up with everything?”

____

“Yeah,” she said, glancing at Nino; suddenly the topic of conversation, Nino’s concern for Adrien fell away to confusion, eyes darting from one to the other.

____

“Catch me up on what? What happened? Adrien?”

____

“Marinette’s really good at disappearing,” Alya said instead, giving Adrien one last out. “If she doesn’t want you to find her, you’re not going to.”

____

Adrien smiled at that. “I’m pretty good at disappearing, too.” He had to, to be Chat Noir – and with how many times he and Ladybug had fought super-villains at school, Adrien knew better than anyone the best places to hide. He gave them a wave, heading off. “I’ll find her.”

____

Maybe if he took long enough, he’d actually know what to say.

____


End file.
